As a general farmer, I just have a small little farm there with 125 acres, and in our State, we just have family-sized farms. They are small farms and generally operated by the family.

I remember very well before this Triple A program was set up, before its inception, that the conditions in Forsyth County and practically all over North Carolina were such that the production had gone down, the farms had been washed away, and the farmer just wasn't able to carry on the soil-building programs, the soil-conservation work, until the inception of this program.

Since this program was set up some 25 years ago, agriculture in North Carolina has been revolutionized. There has been a great change in the production.

Today, you can drive through our county or through that section anywhere and you can tell as you drive along the road the people that have been participating in this Triple A or Production Marketing Administration, or the best one, the ASC, Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation, and the appropriations have been reduced at different times, and when the appropriation was reduced, the participation fell off and it brought about results that are not good for any community or any State.

I believe to start with the appropriation was $500 million.

Then it was reduced to $250 million, and then there was a resolution or bill passed or regulation or something that cut out crops or reduced them down. The market was noticeable in our section because we are a row crop people in North Carolina, the northwest section. We are in the tobacco section and realize and believe that soil-building practices or sod products are the greatest thing that you can put on your land in order to build it up and to maintain and hold your soil, keep down erosion.

But in our section and a large part of North Carolina, where the tobacco is produced-and by the way about 57 percent of the income of North Carolina is from flue-cured tobacco and burley.

So we cannot use these sods on tobacco lands unless we have land enough to rotate and say 3 years rotation.

As I told you in the outset, our farms in North Carolina generally are small family-sized farms. In fact, in my county, Forsyth County, the tobacco allotments are 4.6 acres per farm. That is the largest. The largest tobacco allotment we have in my county, I think, is 28

acres.

Now, that is the largest that we have.

So, therefore, we are vitally interested in this ACP work to continue the soil-building practices and to keep down erosion in our State and in our Nation and in our territory. I live out about 14 miles east of Winston-Salem, and you know Winston-Salem is a commercial center, industrial center, and farm labor is not to be had. We cannot get any labor. It is just fairly-sized farms, and the family owning the farm carries on the work.

Without this support of the ACP, I would have never been able to build up my farm as it is today. In fact, I am still farming today. I am the only boy on my place. I have raised a family of 9 children, and my baby is a boy, and he is 25 years old tomorrow.

He is working today in the United States Army, not of choice at all, because he was drafted, and when he left the farm, that just left me there, and of course, I am not doing much farming.

I worked day before yesterday all day trying to get through some of my lespedeza and clover in order to get in ahead of the next snow and rain, and I just did get it done and in our section there, in Belews Creek Township, there were farms that were depleted and washed away, and when this program was set up, these people began participating and the production in my township has doubled and tripled what it was 25 years ago. In fact, on my own little place and you will pardon me for referring to my place. I know more about it than anybody else.

Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Hester, we welcome that kind of a statement. Mr. Francis from your State preceded you. We have had other very fine witnesses. I have pointed out to many of them-maybe it was pointed out to you-that this committee has always strongly supported the ACP.

In fact, we have had to save it from the attacks of the Budget Bureau, the present Secretary of Agriculture, the leaders of the American Farm Bureau, and various others throughout the years. So we are accustomed to having to defend it. But it does us good and helps us for folks like you and Mr. Francis, who know the program down at the ground level, to come in and testify. We can cite your testimony to these folks we have to combat on the program.

I may say that every man on this committee is thoroughly familiar with the program. Most of us have farm backgrounds. We have had to study it like you would your arithmetic. But notwithstanding that, it is a great help to us to have you talk about your farm and your community. That is what we need. This gives us some witnesses beyond what we say ourselves.

Mr. HESTER. Thank you.

After this program came into effect, and I began to get support, I would just like to give this one thing.

For 12 years now, I haven't come under a hundred bushels of corn to an acre except 3. We had 3 dry years, and I would like to make the statement that they were failures because at the time the corn was trying to make silk and to tassel, it was so dry that it burned up almost to the shoot. Outside of those 3 years, I haven't produced on my little place on an average of less than a hundred bushels of corn an acre. One year I reached 157 bushels, but now, mind you, I don't plant but a little corn. I never planted over 6 acres of corn, usually 5 or 6 acres. I use land that I have built up. I take nothing off of it. It is on a rotation. I am not the only one on that community. There are a good many around that go 50 and 60 and 75 bushels of corn just because of this program that we have today.

I notice that some people say that the farmers are getting something that they don't justly deserve.

Mr. WHITTEN. A agree with that, Mr. Hester. I think they are getting a lot of kicking around they don't deserve. But beyond that, they are not getting their fair share, in my judgment.

Mr. HESTER. Mr. Chairman, the farmer, everything he gets is worth more to the general public than it is to him.

Now, in my candid opinion, we farmers can live without this program. But how are the people in the cities and the people that work elsewhere going to live unless we keep our farms, our soil, and our state of productivity.

Mr. WHITTEN. And I might add, too, how are our children's children going to live if you let your country wear out.

Mr. HESTER. Mr. Chairman, you know today the farm population is down to about 12 percent-121⁄2 something like that.

At the rate of the increase, I believe the figures state that the rate is running around 7,500 to 7,600 births per day, the increase in the population.

There is no increase in the farm population. It is coming down all the time. So, therefore, in just a few years from now we are going to have a population, maybe in 20 years from now, we will have a population in the United States of somewhere around 290 million people.

Well, how are we going to feed these people unless we keep our soils and our productive capacities so that if and when we do need that production we are ready to put it out.

Another thing that I have thought about a lot, when I requested to come before you gentlemen, I noticed a statement not long ago that someone made and I don' know who it was-that said "now was the time for the farmers to show their patriotism if they ever aimed to show it."

Well, that sort of ruffled my hair. Back in 1914, I had a large family, or I began a family. It wasn't so large then, but I hoped to raise my brothers and sisters and when the administration began to call for increased production to feed our people, to feed and clothe our boys and to feed our allies, we people worked a lot of the time around the clock, and when any person begins to talk about the farmer showing his patriotism, if we haven't showed it, there is not a segment of the population in this country that has showed it.

Mr. WHITTEN. This committee thoroughly agrees with you, and we regret to see the present trend in public affairs. We regret to see many articles in newspapers. We hate to see some farm leaders, even, intimate that the farmer hasn't carried his fair share of the load. We hate to see many say that the answer is for the farmer to move to town. That is not right in my judgment. But we would have better times, be better off as a Nation, if more people were on the farms rather than fewer.

As I have pointed out earlier in these hearings, the Secretary of Agriculture himself made a speech in which he pointed out that about half the farmers in this country contributed only about 11 percent of the production that went into commercial channels.

From that, you can see it is not the small farmer that is in the way of contributing to these small surpluses. However, in the judgment of this committee back through the last few years, it is doubtful whether we would have had these surpluses if our Government had not yet refused to sell the surpluses in world trade competitively.

But this committee certainly agrees with you as to the farmer and his patriotism and his need to protect this land, and the soundness of this ACP program.

Mr. HESTER. Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate that, and I don't want to impose on your time at all because I have got 260 miles to drive this evening, and this is not very nice weather to drive, but I am certainly proud that you spoke about these surpluses.

Now, I have been working with these programs since their inception, and I have been interested, I have been on the committee, the county committee for 14 years, and the community for 6 years. I have a 20year opinion of service right here.

But, brother, we don't have a surplus today. Now that is my honest conviction. If our people were fed adequately as we producers have made the products to produce our things, and if we would distribute it to the starving people of the world, we wouldn't have a surplus of supply today.

Mr. ANDERSEN. Also to these folks under old-age assistance in our country who get comparatively little to get along with.

Mr. HESTER. That is right.

Mr. ANDERSEN. That would be a good field to put a lot of our surplus food into.

Mr. HESTER. That is right, and our trouble today is we need something or other, I don't know what it is, gentlemen, but we need distribution some way or another. I don't know how that distribution should come about, but that is what we need, and putting these necessities out into the hands of the people.

There is one other thing and I will not worry you any longer.
Mr. ANDERSEN. You are not worrying us. Go ahead.

Mr. HESTER. There is one other thing that I would like to mention. Back 40 years ago, the life span was way down, 40-some years.

Today the life span is what, about 67 years. What has brought it about gentlemen? It is the minerals that we farmers have been putting back into our soil through this program that we have that has supplied the minerals and the things that are necessary with the medical science that has lengthened our life span. We are getting lots of things out of the soil today, out of the crops that we make, that we didn't get 40 years ago.

So I just would like to plea with you for a moment, let's not reduce this appropriation and my honest, sincere desire is, if it is possible to do that, that it could be raised to $500 million and give the farmers a chance, because it is the old man today that is doing the big end of the work. The young men have gone to town.

So if you have any questions, anything you would like to ask me, I would like to answer them if I can.

Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Hester, I think you have covered it rather thoroughly. I do think that the committee will make every effort to restore this $125 million cut, to keep the $250 million program. I don't believe there is a man on the committee that doesn't believe that $500 million could easily be spent in this program. But our problem is that we don't have the support of the Secretary of Agriculture. He is for cutting it in half. We don't have the support of the President. He is for cutting it in half. We don't have the support of the American Farm Bureau Federation. It is for cutting it. And we have a lot of Members of Congress who have fought us in the past.

In other words, we must hold ourselves in line with what is practical. It is my guess that the best that we see much chance of is to restore the proposed cut by the President, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Secretary. But you can be sure that, if they get by with their cut, they will do it over our strongest opposition.

I want to thank you again for going to the trouble of coming here in support of this program.

Mr. HESTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly appreciate this opportunity, and if there is anything that we people can do any time down there, just let us know.

Mr. WHITTEN. Your Congressmen always support the farm programs. I am glad to say that here. They always have.

AGRICULTURAL CONSERVATION PROGRAM

WITNESS

JEWELL GRAHAM, LEWISBURG, KY.

Mr. NATCHER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to present to you and to the other members of our committee, my friend, Jewell Graham of Lewisburg, Ky.

This gentleman, Mr. Chairman, is an outstanding farmer. He appears at this time to testify in behalf of the ACP program. Now off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. ANDERSEN. I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I am sure the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Graham, is well aware of the high regard in which we hold Mr. Natcher in this subcommittee. I think you people are fortunate in having a man of Mr. Natcher's capabilities and interests, general interests in agriculture, representing that section of Kentucky up here.

Mr. WHITTEN. I join that.

Mr. ANDERSEN. I welcome you here, Mr. Graham.

Mr. WHITTEN. I join with my colleague from Minnesota.

You know, I felt that I was highly privileged when I got on this subcommittee when I came to Congress representing an agricultural district, because it is the committee where you review the actual operations of the Department of Agriculture and all the farm programs. It is a place where you have a chance to serve agriculture, and I think that we on the committee take some degree of pride in the fact that by hard work and maybe some luck we have gotten on the committee where we deal with these things.

Of those who have been added to this committee in my experience here, none are more interested or work harder in support of agricultural programs than Bill Natcher. We are proud to have him on the committee and may I say to you he carries his share of the load on the committee. He has received a number of signal honors here, but this is the place where he has a chance to serve his folks and he does a good job on it.

Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that there isn't a nice thing that could be said about our colleague, Mr. Natcher, that I couldn't concur with wholeheartedly. In my estimation he is an able, capable, and industrious Member of the Congress.

Mr. NATCHER. Mr. Chairman, I certainly want to thank you and my friends on this committee for those fine statements.

Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Natcher and committee members.