past six weeks. They have set up interviews with their congressmen, questioned bureaucrats at the Agriculture Department and met together four nights a week since mid-January to discuss their progress.

"Once our numbers get diluted down to 500 or so, you can lose the farmers pretty quick in this city," Shuler said, "but we are here, we are no flash in the pan."

Farmers on their second and third tours of Washington are learning, Suhler said, “how things work here in Washington." They know whom to call to reserve time for testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee and they are meeting sympathetic Washingtonians who help them cut the high cost of maintaining a presence in the city.

One night last week, for example, 10 Kansas farmers put up $31 for hamburger, sauce and buns and had a feed on “sloppy joes” in the Capitol Hill home of Herb Hunter, a Washington pharmacist.

Hunter and several of his friends are boarding farmers in their homes and have invited people from the neighborhood to listen to the farmers' problems.

Farmers this week in Hunter's house said they thought they were helping their cause by forcing their congressional delegations to pay attention to their problems. But they said they're growing increasingly bitter because they no longer get any attention from the news media.

Kenneth McDaniels, who says he lost $32,000 last year farming 1,280 acres in Edson, Kan., said the farmers in Washington desperately need television coverage so farmers back home, some of whom are footing the bill for their friends in Washington don't get discouraged.

The farmers in Hunter's house mentioned news coverage of last Wednesday's violent confrontation in Hidalgo, Tex., where police stopped 200 farmers from blocking truckloads of Mexican watermelons entering the United States. The farmers say they were protesting importation of farm products grown with the aid of pesticides, like DDT, that are banned in the U.S.

"We never get any attention in the media unless it is connected to violence," McDaniels said.

"Let me ask this," Cox said to the farmers and neighborhood people in Hunter's house this week, “If you have three-quarters of your people out in my area going broke, don't you think there'll be some sort of action?"

Lynwood Chatman, a Washington cabinet maker who listened to the farmers' problems this week, told them they have to keep on fighting "just like the Vietnamese did. From what you tell me, I can see you can't go back home."

[Reprint from the Washington Star, Mar. 8, 1978]

OUR MISUNDERSTOOD FARMERS

(By Larry Waterfield)

Old Andy Jackson would have loved the farm strikers who are in town. There is something decidedly Jacksonian about the farmers who have flocked here from the hinterlands. They put their big boots up on the desks and chairs in the hearing rooms: they stomp and cheer for their advocates and deride their critics. They don't give two hoots or a holler about decorum.

They bring with them quaint notions about how public servants ought to serve and representatives ought to represent. You can't find a vest or a briefcase in a busload. They don't use such words as "prioritize" and "viable." Their unsophisticated minds have trouble figuring out why they are going broke feeding a starving world.

When farmers take to the streets, something is afoot. Skeptics point to the rising value of farm property. But you can only spend property values if you sell your land.

Take the care of the Missouri farm family. The value of its land, machinery and crops is put at $824,000. But in four years-1973 through 1976-the family made an average net profit of $2.700 a year. And that was divided among three family units-the father and mother, a son and his wife, and a daughter and her husband. They farm 1.800 acres. Naturally the family has to have other income sources. The women work in town.

This family would be better off to sell out and live off the interest on the money earned. But what would the family members do the rest of their lives? They'd take jobs; and they'd probably, take them from somebody else. And they'd be cut off from the work they want to do. Society would lose, coming and going.

And if a farmer decides to chuck it all and sell out, who will he sell to? Arabs? West Germans? Chemical companies? Corporations? He won't be selling to the young man or woman fresh out of ag school; they don't have the $824,000 to get into farming.

There are fewer farmers now-2.7 million-than there were a year ago. The numbers declined by 1 per cent in a year. Productivity of those left rose by 6 per cent. And there will be fewer farmers in the future.

But politicians who play a numbers game when it comes to farmers may be in for a rude shock. Anthony Sampson, in his book New Anatomy of Britain, points out that Britain's 200,000 farmers wield power and influence far beyond their numbers. He notes that the 55 million Britons who don't farm are very much in awe of those who do. On the other hand, the city-dwellers believe the nation's farmers are trustees of important social values beyond the production of food and fiber. Among those values are husbandry of the countryside and preservation of the land from the asphalt march.

Deep in the soul of most urbanites is the understanding that the farmer is more than a bucolic fellow sitting on a tractor. There's the realization that real wealth springs not from paper shuffling but from producing something, growing something, a renewable resource. The urbanite can understand the sentiment expressed in a slogan seen around town: "When you run out of food, eat a bureaucrat for lunch."

There is a great reservoir of sympathy and goodwill for the farmer. The polls show this. The urbanite doesn't blame the farmer for high food prices. He also understands that guaranteeing the food supply is basic. And he understands the word "strike."

The U.S. dominates world food surpluses to a greater degree than any Arab state dominates oil production. It is indeed ironic that the American farmer, the most productive in the world, and the greatest contributor to a favorable trade balance. should be told to cut back. It is more than ironic; it smacks of the immoral.

Turn the American farmer loose and let him feed the nation and the world. He can save more lives than were lost in 50 or 100 Vietnams. And if he has to be subsidized. then do it. It makes more sense than subsidizing planemakers, passenger trains and martini drinkers.

STATEMENT OF HON. HORACE DAGGETT, IOWA STATE REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE 96TH DISTRICT, DES MOINES, IOWA

Senator Talmadge, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senators, staff members and other guests. I am Horace Daggett, State Representative from the state of Iowa. I want to express my personal appreciation to the members of the Senate Agriculture committee for the opportunity of making a presentation at this meeting.

In my role as a farmer and as State Representative, I shall try to convey to you some of my concerns.

I would like to suggest to you that we put our total national wealth into three categories. The first being that New Wealth which comes from food, fiber, minerals, oil and fish. The second area of Wealth is in the manufacture and redistribution of that which I have previously mentioned. The third being transferred wealth such as Social Security, retirement funds, welfare and assistance programs.

The foundation for a strong economy is basically that of New Wealth. Today I would like to address a very important part of this New Wealth, that being food and fiber, which is one of the few sources of renewable New Wealth.

I would like to present some statistics from the state of Iowa.

1978 STATISTICAL PROFILE OF IOWA, IOWA DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

Net income per farm, Midwest Region (Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin).

Excludes changes in inventories and represents income of Farm operators.

During this period of time there has been a consistent inflation factor, thus ever increasing the cost-price squeeze for farmers.

Economic and social reasons have brought about an ever decreasing number of farmers left on the land.

NOTE.-Detail may not add to totals due to rounding.

Source: State Farm Income Statistics, September 1977, Economic Research Service, USDA.

EXHIBIT B

As farm income has declined, it has had some drastic effects upon Iowa, its people and communities. It affects the life-blood of communities in business sales. It takes people to generate an economy and a strong economy to attract people. Large scale farming people has brought a very high risk factor into farming. It is based on a small profit per unit with many units being produced to make a living. This condition may be eliminating the opportunity to start on a small scale and work up.

An example in the loss of population is the closing of many small churches and schools. In Iowa we now have a declining enrollment in 90 percent of our schools.

It takes people to generate an economy and a strong economy to attract people. Many rural banks are loaned to their capacity and repayment of farm operating loans has been very slow. It has become necessary to provide for refinancing, but some time these debts must be repaid.

I think the real shocker came to me this year when I read the 1978 Barnard and Dent report to our Ways and Means committee. It stated that there were $1.2 billion in transfer of wealth payments in Iowa while only $823 million in net farm income!

'Let us look at some things that may be done.

I would urge you to re-establish full funding of the Conservation program. I would ask that you restructure the Department of Agriculture with an Agricultural Advisor Council who would regularly have direct contact with the Secretary of Agriculture and that this Advisory Council be made up of farmers actively engaged in farming from each of the major segments of the United States farming production industry.

I do not know all that is involved in the imports or exports, but I feel that maximum efforts should be made to increase exports and to establish a suitable import policy which would not hold down farm prices.

I feel there should be a new look given to establishing a long term loan program for young people going into farming. A plan could be developed which would call for very little principal payment at a low interest rate. This would increase as the young people became established and gain equity. This would give them the opportunity to enter the agricultural field. At the present time the average age of the Midwest farmer is 56-58 years.

Perhaps it would be best that we stop bringing into production marginal land that ought to be left in a natural state.

Why not pay our United Nations dues in food instead of dollars? The United Nations could distribute this to the very poorest of the world. Include with a Human Rights amendment that a certain percent of foreign aid has to be taken in food if the country has this need and it would not hurt its economy. Encourage the use of grains to be made into fuel that can be used on tbo farm, controlled by Farmer-Owned Cooperatives.

Iowa has done some things to help the Agricultural community. We are putting $4 million of State monies into Soil Conservation practices. Our land is a precious commodity and needs to be conserved.

We have approached a realistic way of taxing farm land by productivity. We will use 50 percent of the money from the increase of hunting and fishing license fees to lease land for soil conserving crops and wildgame habitat.

We passed restrictions of Farm Corporations who do not qualify as farmfamily corporations actively engaged in farming. These restrictions limit any expansion of the nonfamily farm corporation.

We are now considering a bill which would limit the foreign investment in land. We are proud of our farm land and believe that it should belong to and be operated by farmers.

STATEMENT OF KAREN KIRK, SPOKESWOMAN, TEXAS ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN INVOLVED IN FARM ECONOMICS-WIFE

I represent one of a growing number of farm and agriculture-related women in the Western part of the United States who have joined together with a common goal: that of promoting prosperity in agriculture in a dignified, energetic and law-abiding manner.

W.I.F.E. was organized in December, 1976 because a group of farm women in Nebraska discovered from visiting with each other that each situation was similar desperate and that something had to be done.