APPROPRIATION BILL FOR 1943

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SEVENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

CLARENCE CANNON, Missouri, Chairman

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE APPROPRIATION BILL,

1943

HEARINGS CONDUCTED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE, MESSRS. MAL-
COLM C. TARVER (CHAIRMAN), CLARENCE CANNON, CHARLES
H. LEAVY, DAVID D. TERRY, ROSS A. COLLINS, WILLIAM P. LAM-
BERTSON, EVERETT M. DIRKSEN AND CHARLES A. PLUMLEY,
OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, HOUSE OF REPRE-
SENTATIVES, IN CHARGE OF THE AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT
APPROPRIATION BILL FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1941, ON THE
DAYS FOLLOWING, NAMELY:

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 1942.

STATEMENTS OF HON. CLAUDE R. WICKARD, SECRETARY OF
AGRICULTURE; W. A. JUMP, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND
BUDGET OFFICER

Mr. TARVER. The committee begins its hearings this morning with relation to the appropriation bill for the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal year 1943. We are deprived of the service as chairman of this committee of our beloved colleague, Mr. Cannon of Missouri, on account of his well-deserved promotion to the chairmanship of the full Committee on Appropriations. We are delighted that he is to be able to give us some of his time and to collaborate and cooperate with us in endeavoring to meet the needs of agriculture insofar as that can be done through the agency of this bill.

We have with us this morning the Secretary of Agriculture and we anticipate from you, Mr. Secretary, as broad and comprehensive a review as may be possible of the agricultural situation throughout the country; the administration of the appropriations which have been made for the present fiscal year; the needs of griculture, insofar as they may be reasonably anticipated for the next fiscal year and may be served through the instrumentality of appropriations to be made in the pending bill, and any other related subject matter to which you think the attention of the committee should be directed.

We would like for you to make as complete a statement as you deem desirable after which members of the committee will want to interrogate you.

GENERAL STATEMENT

Secretary WICKARD. Mr. Chairman, I have no prepared statement but I do want to talk to you rather informally about the agricultural situation as I see it today, about some of the things that have happened in the last year and some of those that may lie ahead.

A year ago when I came before this committee I think I spent quite a little time discussing the agricultural situation especially as it re

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1943, pt. 1

lated to farm prices and supplies of farm products. To meet new demands then foreseen we had asked farmers for some increase in production of some commodities, but for the most part, a year ago we were very much concerned with burdensome supplies and low farm prices.

IMPROVEMENT OF FARM PRICES

Since a year ago there has been great improvement in farm prices for a number of reasons. One of the reasons, of course, is the action of the Congress in several ways: in lifting the loan level for basic agricultural commodities, in the so-called Steagall amendment, and other things which have to do with the operations of the Commodity Credit Corporation, or with purchases made by funds for food authorized in the lend-lease appropriation. Of course we have had a great increase in the domestic demand for agricultural products, and this has raised farm prices.

So, farm prices today are much nearer the goal that we have all hoped for parity-than they have been for many years. As a matter of fact, during the last year on one occasion farm prices averaged parity. They did not average parity long. That occurred in October. They went down again after October, but today they are only slightly below parity, on the average.

So, the price situation does not give us near the concern it did a year ago.

Now, as to supplies, as I have said. a year ago we were worrying because of the large supplies of many commodities we had on hand.

FARM PRODUCTION PROBLEMS

Today we are not so much worried about the large supplies. I should say that with the exception of wheat I do not think there is any particular commodity that I think is in burdensome supply, and wheat perhaps is burdensome only because there does not seem to be much opportunity to get enough storage space for another large crop which seems to be in prospect at the present time.

Our cotton consumption this year is running ahead of production and it seems now that by the time another crop is ready for the market we will have reduced our carry-over of cotton about 1,000,000 bales as compared with a year ago.

But, today when I am asked what the future may bring for us or what the situation may be a year from now I am going to say that I do not know. And, I am very much worried about it. I am alarmed, and I suspect one of the reasons I am alarmed is because there do not seem to be many others who are alarmed about it. I say worried from the standpoint of what the size of the potential demands may be for agricultural products and, also from the standpoint of the difficulties that may be ahead of us for agricultural production. In both future demand and future production I do not think our imagination will carry us far enough to predict exactly what will be the situation a year or 2 years from now.

We farmers all know that we have to plant in the springtime if there is to be a harvest in the fall, and that we have to plan our agricultural production program a year or 2 years ahead. And we also realize that we have to have price to get food. Despite the fact

that we have shipped a million tons of food to the British in the last 9 months, we still have a pretty good supply on hand now because we had a good supply to start with. We have not had a scarcity type of program in agriculture although some have seemed to think so. We have not had that type of program and we are happy that we have not had that type of program. And with our plans, with our activities, and with our supplies we are in good position today. Now what may be the demands a year from now? I think your guess is as good as mine, but I want to say briefly that every day brings to me changes in previously known demands and also absolutely new demands from nations and from peoples that we had not been thinking about before Pearl Harbor. I suspect that none of us are fully aware of some of the things that may lie ahead. I want to say that I feel that we have not been, until just the last few days, sufficiently aware of some of the problems of production that are ahead.

As you know the President said in his Budget Message that food was an essential war material. It surely is, in my judgment.

Now getting around to the problem of producing this essential material: Everybody in this room, I know, has heard from the farmer in his deep concern over the shortage of labor. For a while we said that we were concerned about the shortage of skilled labor. Last fall I made some statements which I thought were apropos in the situation then pointing out that we should not take boys away from the farms who had been trained, who had a lifetime of experience in taking care of dairy herds, livestock herds, poultry farms, fruit farms and other things; those activities must go on I said, and production should not be jeopardized. Now we are coming to the point where we are concerned about the total supply of labor, unskilled as well as skilled, and I am afraid that the farm labor problem is going to grow worse and worse. I do not think we can look to machinery to replace farm labor to a great extent, because we do not have the metals and other materials. for the machinery. And there are all kinds of evidences that we will not be able to get enough fertilizer. For nitrates farmers are in competition with munitions makers as they try to get the nitrates needed for agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. Also insecticides.

Secretary WICKARD. Yes; insecticides; acids, sulphuric acid, and

so on.

Also, we are worried today about how we are going to transport things that are produced on the farm. I think we all know that we have been transporting things, to and from farms largely on rubber tires. It is going to be difficult to go back and find enough horses and wagons in this way and time to carry on our normal agricultural transportation.

I talked with a man yesterday who said that he had been operating a large feed distribution business all on rubber and now he is beginning to worry about what he should do. I advised him to try to immediately get his feed bagged and stored, and right away he said, "Where can I get the bags?'

That brings up another problem: How to get burlap bags with jute supply cut off. We are trying to make use of cotton, but the cotton mills are running at capacity. We are going to have to take some action, I think, in order to make bags available.