funds for this purpose. There are now many well-trained Federal research scientists who have less than $1,000 available each year for supplies, equipment, and subprofessional help to do routine tasks such as counting seed, weeding experimental plots, harvesting, etc. As a result, highly skilled scientists must do many of these tasks, thus limiting the extent of the work possible and the most efficient utilization of their skills.

Present Federal pay scales for research scientists, long noncompetitive with industry, now are $1,000 to $1,500 less than salaries for comparable positions in many States. It is becoming increasingly difficult to fill Federal jobs and to retain highly skilled personnel. The matter of salaries and advancement of plant scientists employed by the Federal Government needs careful study and decisive action. Those who realize that it often takes 12 to 15 years to develop a new crop variety recognize that any reduction in farm-research programs now will disrupt vital basic and applied research for many years. Unless funds are provided to strengthen present research, current programs cannot be maintained-they will actually be reduced. At a time when Soviet science, including agriculture, is striving to challenge the scientific know-how and leadership of the free world, it becomes increasingly important to maintain our current capacity to produce food. Basic and applied research must be strengthened to insure our future capabilities in this important field.

There is no question that the Russians are ahead of the rest of the world, the United States included, in certain nonagricultural fields. Concentrated research efforts have been responsible for this unprecedented surge to new heights of knowledge and operational skills by the Soviets. Now they have publicly informed the world that they intend to surpass all other countries in agricultural production. Russia is graduating more than twice as many agricultural students from their agricultural colleges than is the United States. While the number of Russian students in agriculture has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, the number of our agricultural graduates has declined by 30 percent.

Our supply of agricultural scientists has dwindled, but we can ease the situation in the United States by extending the arms and productivity of existing well-qualified research men through the provision of necessary funds to hire technical assistants, extra labor, equipment, and permit necessary travel. Until more trained research scientists are available, this is our only solution to the immediate problem.

The following additional farm research funds are needed beyond present budget requests, largely for operational funds to protect our most important food, feed, oil, and forage crops:

Two emergency situations exist at the present time. One involves the cereal rusts, the other involves rice. All commercial oat varieties, breeding lines, and readily usable sources of rust resistance are threatened by new races of oat crown rust and stem rust. Dangerous races of crown rust, widely distributed in the southern and central United States last summer, caused severe losses in Illinois and Indiana where oat tests weights of 12 to 15 pounds per bushel were common. Concentrated acreages of Selkirk wheat and the new durum wheats in the North Central States are vulnerable to attack by dangerous biotypes of wheat stem rust present but not yet prevalent in the United States.

Winter tests of wheat, oats, and barley breeding lines against dangerous rust races, begun several years ago on the island of Puerto Rico, are not yet adequate. Nearly 6,000 wheat and oat breeding lines are now being tested at this location where manmade rust epidemics can be started, with biotypes already present in the United States, without endangering mainland cereal plantings. Additional test locations are needed where dangerous races not yet present in the United States can be used. Such rigorous field testing is basic to the entire rust control program. Rust tests must be expanded on Puerto Rico if future severe rust losses in the principal grain growing areas of the United States are to be averted.

The United States rice industry faces a serious threat from the Hoja blanca or white leaf disease of rice. This destructive virus disease, present in Venezuela, Cuba, and Colombia, was found for the first time in the United States last fall at Belle Glade, Fla. Vigorous efforts were made immediately to eradicate this outbreak and are being continued at the present time. All commercial rice varieties grown in the United States are susceptible to Hoja blanca. The seriousness of this disease threat to the United States rice industry is evident when the situation near Camaguey, Cuba, is considered. Sixteen farmers grew more than 15,000 acres of rice in the area 3 years ago. Today, because of attacks of Hoja blanca, only 3 farmers are left who grow less than 3,000 acres of rice.

Present United States Department of Agriculture research efforts on the Hoja blanca research program in Cuba are wholly inadequate, considering the seriousness of this disease. Much of the research and all of the testing must be done outside the United States where the disease is present. During the 12- to 15-year period generally required to test and develop a new variety, the United States rice industry, and those whose economic well-being depend directly or indirectly upon it, are vulnerable to severe losses.

There is need to strengthen other research programs. Recurring attacks of a complex of barley leaf diseases have damaged the concentrated acreage of Kindred barley in the North Central States. The aster yellows disease, widely distributed and destructive in 1957, is a serious new threat to flax production. Improved varieties of extensively grown forage crops are needed with greater resistance to winter killing, diseases, and insect pests. The development of forages of higher nutritive value is important in the efficient production of livestock.

Little is known about the method of action of chemicals in controlling plant diseases. This information is basic to the development of

economical chemical control of the rusts and other diseases. Only a limited program is now underway on these studies of fundamental and far-reaching practical importance. It should be expanded.

During 1957 more than 3 million rust susceptible barberry bushes were destroyed in 19 States of the barberry eradication area. This brings the number of bushes destroyed since inception of this control program to more than 513 million. More than 94 percent of the million square mile area involved has been cleared of the barberry and only maintenance is required to keep it free of these bushes on which new and often dangerous rust races develop.

The role of plant quarantine and control officials in guarding our borders against the ever-increasing threat of introduced plant pests is a vital one. Witchweed on corn and the soybean cyst nematode, two foreign pests discovered in the United States recently, must be contained or serious losses will result to the corn and soybean crops. There were 50,000 more interceptions of dangerous plant diseases and insect pests at ports of entry last year than in the preceding one. This important work needs to be strengthened.

Obviously, there is need for reasonable expansion of research aimed at utilizing present surpluses of agricultural commodities, but there seems to be little recognition that research can only go as far in utilizing more efficiently, or for still more diverse purposes, the chemical constituents of our principal crop plants as present in them today. There is enough information available about the variation between individual lines of the world collections of individual crops (15,000 lines in the case of wheat) to indicate the potential value of research to determine the full extent to which present crops may be modified through plant breeding to fit the end product (the grain) for wider utilization.

The recent discovery of corn lines in which 80 percent of the starch is made up of anylose, instead of the usual 25 percent, opens up new markets for the utilization of corn in the manufacture of plastics and transparent films, once this characteristic is bred into agronomically desirable varieties. The task of transferring such desired characteristics into useful varieties can only be accomplished through plant breeding.

Results thus far clearly indicate that $250,000 could well be invested in plant-breeding programs to determine the range in chemical constituents for presently grown crop plants of all kinds and to combine lines high in desired components into useful commercial varieties by plant breeding. If the concentration of vitamins, enzymes, hormones, or other chemical "building blocks" could be increased in currently grown crops through plant breeding, portions of an expanded production might be used as the basic raw materials for entirely new industries. Farmers then could continue to efficiently produce crops they are faimilar with, but for entirely new

uses.

The recent discovery of the beneficial effect on human health of certain components of safflower oil gives further impetus to this approach. Through plant breeding it should be possible to incorporate these desirable components into widely adapted varieties.

Plant scientists have made great progress in combating plant diseases, insect pests and in insuring more dependable and efficient crop

production. Much has been accomplished but little is actually known about the physiological basis which governs the reaction of all our crop plants to winter injury, heat and drought damage, soil and water conditions, as well as to diseases and insect pests. Such basic information underlies the most efficient production of all crops throughout the United States. Fundamental research of this nature requires the full-time efforts of teams of scientists, trained in many scientific fields, with extensive laboratory, greenhouse, and plant growth chamber facilities in which environmental conditions can be rigidly controlled. A laboratory facility adequate to study these problems on a national basis would cost approximately $5 million. The need for this facility has been recognized and its construction is urged by the Great Plains Agricultural Council, representing 10 States of the Great Plains between Mexico and the Canadian border; the National Association of Wheat Growers, and the National Forage Research Committee. Progress toward the establishment of a National Crop Physiology Laboratory can be made now by providing $250,000 to permit the development of plans and specifications for this facility. This will allow time for careful consideration of overall needs and will permit most efficient use of funds allocated later for construction.

Construction of the National Seed Storage Facility is well underway at Fort Collins, Colo., with $450,000 allocated for this purpose 2 years ago. This long-time storage facility for plant germ plasm from all over the world is basic to all future crop improvement programs. The members of this committee did much to insure construction of this vital facility.

Constantly changing crop production problems require long-time basic and applied research. Too often disease and insect pests have caused extensive damage on a regional or national basis before funds became available to meet threats which once were small and could be combated at little cost. The results of research often don't become available for 15 to 20 years. With food playing an increasingly important role in international relations, we must not allow crop research to be slowed down. Now is the time to strengthen crop research programs to insure the future stability of crop production which affects all segments of the Nation's economy.

This committee has always demonstrated a keen interest in crop research and control programs. I appreciate this opportunity to call these matters to your attention.

Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Fletcher, we have listened to your statement with interest. We recognize these problems and are glad that you have brought them to our attention. I just looked at the budget requested by the Department of Agriculture and it is $1,545,780,653 for regular activities. That represents a large increase in funds to the Department in recent years. I will grant you that figure does not represent what agriculture needs and would like to have, but it represents about as much money as the people can afford.

I have been of the opinion for a long time that we should stress in our report what we think they ought to do, and give them a right of transferability up to 7 percent. They should finish up some of these programs in research and move on to other ones. Yet each time and I do not criticize you people in the least-somebody comes to the Department, apparently they are told, "You get us some more

money and we will do it." If we approach these problems in that way we will probably have to double the budget.

We have been sitting here all week and we have not heard anyone who wanted to cut anything. You can afford to give emphasis to some of these things because you have been working on them for 20 years. But we will have requests probably for another $1,500,000 from people like yourself who see a need and recognize it. I do not argue with you. I know the need is there. Do you see our point?

Mr. FLETCHER. I certainly do and I take my hat off to you for doing the job you have been doing. We have felt right along with this tremendous expenditure we would be remiss as representatives of the farmers, and of industry, if we did not call your attention to the soft spots. What your committee does with it-you are the court of final approval is in your hands. We have no other place we can take our case. The amount of money you spoke of is tremendous, there is no question about that but only a small part of it is being spent on crop production research. As far as the needs go in the particular cases of our chief commercial agricultural food and feed crops, I do know the need from the standpoint of the man in the field, the farmer, the handler and processor and the research workers-especially the farmer and research worker at the field level. Whatever you can do in any of these cases I am sure will result in increased knowledge to agriculture that will benefit our national economy in the years ahead. Mr. MARSHALL. How can plant scientists cooperate in the efforts being made by the Public Health officials to improve diets? What can be done about that?

Mr. FLETCHER. I have some ideas on that. I think the matter of breeding for utilization is right in line as an answer to your question. As an example of that, I notice in the budget there is $400.000 for safflower utilization research. We know that there is promise of a factor in the oil of safflower which has an effect upon the cholesterol in your blood. If in all these other crops we could breed for quality for human consumption and health as well as for animal nutrition, I believe such an approach would be of great benefit to the overall improvement of diets and our national health problems. I believe that the basis of improvements in this field must come through crop breeding. Complete cooperative effort by the breeders and the utilization chemists, nutritionists, and diet specialists is needed to accomplish the best results.

Mr. MARSHALL. Do you think that we have been a little slow in that approach?

Mr. FLETCHER. I do not think we have more than scratched the surface in that area.

Mr. ANDERSEN. I have known for many years your fine work, done by you and your organization for the farmers of this Nation. I want to express my appreciation to you for that work. You have done a splendid job. You are continuing to do a splendid job.

I believe were it not for your organization and the impetus it has put on trying to get rid of some of the destruction caused by rust, the farmers of the Nation would be a good many hundreds of millions of dollars worse off today than they are, and I say that in all sincerity.