This is what the government should address. We adhere to quality standards, to wage standards, to pesticide and insecticide standards, to OSHA standards and to many other standards. It is time for the government to serve its constituent farmers and eliminate marketing practices engaged in by foreign producers which, if carried out by American farmers, would be illegal.

In closing, let me say that our groups are not "fly-by-night" operations. We intend to pursue our rights and remedies in every conceivable forum until we see a return to a true, competitive market.

But some remedies may take many months or years. And a large number of our farmers cannot survive this long time span under the present conditions. Accordingly, we ask for your immediate and forceful help. Return us to a fair market and we'll be happy to take the risks of our free enterprise system. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE SINNER, PRESIDENT, RED RIVER VALLEY SUGARBEET GROWERS ASSOCIATION, PRESENTED BY AL BLOOMQUIST, VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN CRYSTAL SUGAR CO.

Mr. Chairman. Members of the Committee: My name is Al Bloomquist. I am the Vice-President for Public Affairs of the American Crystal Sugar Company, a Minnesota agricultural cooperative owned by sugarbeet growers in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota. I present this tesimony for Mr. George Sinner, president of the grower's association.

The agony that almost always accompanies human existence has rarely been absent from the sugar industry in recent years. The industry had a moment of ecstasy when prices were good a few years ago but it was a brief moment of ecstasy that was followed by a bitter morning after. Not only did the industry fall heir to expanded world production and plummeting prices but in addition consumers sought out a new sweetner product to further compound the problems of overproduction. As though this were not enough, the industry became the scapegoat for a myriad of alleged human nutrition problems promulgated by people who played upon that isolated instant of high prices. The nutritionist fad has come into vogue and even though its spokesmen are often unprofessional, it has succeeded in convincing the public that whatever tastes good is bad.

In trying to analyze where we've been and where we are now, I don't think anyone can escape the conclusion that one of the events in recent history that aggravated this situation was the killing of the forty-year-old U.S. sugar program in 1974. To be sure its demise was not the sole cause of sugar woes but the absence of any program in the United States encouraged world exporters to increase sugar production because they felt that they could always dump it here. I know that there are many advocates of the so-called free market system that regularly damn government for all the ills that mankind encounters and that want all government programs killed. But let's be honest, government in the basic analysis is only people working together. You are our agents and our policy makers. To be sure you cannot always come up with perfect solutions but then neither can we as individuals nor as communities nor even as corporate structures. But recognizing this we must go to realize that we are, after all, rational beings, and even though we can't create a perfect society, we are still intelligent enough to recognize that some order is better than chaos. In the case of sugar chaos is all we've had for four years since the defeat of the U.S. sugar program. It has been a chaos of wildly fluctuating supplies and wildly fluctuating prices. And it has been a chaos that has defined rationality for anyone. The situation has been equally bad for users and consumers as well as for producers and processors.

One must ask: how can producers plan from year to year, how can they buy machinery, how can they plan an intelligent crop rotation, when there is no way of knowing whether or not their plans and investments have any hope of producing even breakeven returns the following year? How can processors keep their mills up to date and efficient? How can food processors plan their products and their markets and their prices when the price of one of their basic commodities goes up and down like a yo-yo? How can consumers possibly understand when the cost of sugar can be 65 cents a pound one day and almost overnight plummets to 6 or 7 cents a pound? How can they help but fall prey to the demagogues who

preach cheap food and would perpetuate the mood that farmers should be second class citizens?

I hasten to recognize that some efforts have been made to improve the situation. As you know in recent months the U.S. Government, in cooperation with other countries that are interested in sugar, either as exporters or importers, has negotiated an International Sugar Agreement. The Congress also passed the de la Garza amendment which set the price at which the Government must support the price of sugar at between 52.5 percent and 65 percent of parity The industry, I think, is grateful for both of these achievements and yet there is so little real assurance that the International Agreement will work and so little long-range help in the de la Garza amendment.

The agreement is new and untried and is subject to many doubts. The de la Garza amendment does not even support the price of sugar sufficiently high to cover the cost of production-at least at the level which the present Administration is operating it. When the industry supported the International Agreement in the formative discussions it did so with the clear insistence that the 11-cent floor in the Agreement should be raised to a higher figure and also with the clear belief that the International Agreement must be backed up by domestic legislation. At the same time the industry's support of de la Garza was at 55-65 percent of parity and that only for an emergency short-term period. But the Administration, under threat of veto, pressured the conference committee back to 52.5 percent and the domestic industry is still in desperate straits.

So now we must do what we can to develop a long-range sweetener program that will bring some reason into the sweetener market. There have been some who have alleged that any domestic legislation would conflict with the International Agreement. If this is so, then the Agreement is certainly doomed because every country in the world except the U.S. has stringent controls on sugar imports. The recent study done by the Foreign Agricultural Service of the USDA on governmental policies affecting sugar should forever lay that argument to rest. Almost every single country in the world has highly restrictive programs on sugar. Let me quote from the study.

Commenting on the European Economic Community:

"Self-sufficiency" is the first cited objective of the EEC Sugar Policy which develops a significant "threshold" price protection for EEC producers." The report adds: "Thus no sugar is imported in the community at less than the threshold price."

On Argentina.-"Surcharges are placed on imports to nullify any competitive advantages to importing sugar."

On Australia.—"The Commonwealth prohibits imports of sugar . . .”

On India.-"Exports and imports must be authorized under special Government permit. There are virtually no sugar imports."

On Indonesia.-"To assure the domestic price stability and supply of sugar, all sugar produced domestically, plus any imports needed, is purchased by a nonprofit government agency."

On Canada. "International price gyrations are countered by long-term supply agreements with set ranges."

On Japan. "Long-term treaties with negotiated prices are preferred."

An so the report goes. Many, many countries have total control of all exports and imports. It is a running story of stringent controls of imports and in the cases of large producing countries virtual prohibition of imports.

The significant point is that these countries are the signatory countries to the International Sugar Agreement. It is even more significant to me that the U.S. being possibly the largest importer of sugar in the world is in all probability the main force in maintaining that International Agreement. But to do so we must have legislation that clearly says to all of the world's sugar exporters: "You are not going to dump your leftover sugar on our shores whenever you want to and then rob us blind when there is a shortage in the world." If we do not have legislation that makes this clear then the International Agreement will fall in a shambles. If exporting countries have burgeoning storage problems during the early years of the International Agreement, which they are almost certain to have, the temptation to dump their sugar in this country may be too great and the Agreement will be lost. In addition, while we support the International Agreement and the concept that it incorporates, we recognize as well that you cannot do on a global level what often must be done on a national level. Certainly some limitations on supply and demand and prices of a global nature can and should be

29-974 O-78-23

achieved. But to suggest that global delineations completely satisfy the needs of the people of this country, or of any other country for that matter, is quite another statement.

It is absolutely essential that this country devise a sweetener program that will encompass the domestic suppliers and users of all sweeteners and that arrives at a price level that is considerably above that price which is the floor of the International Sugar Agreement. As a matter of fact the Department of State and other Administration sources have said on repeated occasion that they anticipate that if the International Sugar Agreement works, the world price will be more near the middle of that 11-21 cent range. And they have indicated that they believe this is the level that is realistic for the American economy.

Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee, I know that the Congress is concerned about this problem, and about the overall farm problem. In regard to the frightening problems of the overall farm sector it is crucial to realize that if the U.S. sugar industry dies, millions of acres of the richest land in the nation will go into production or crops already in overwhelming surplus. I know too that you are alarmed about the folly of a cheap food policy. The point of all of this is that we desperately need your leadership to develop a long-range sweetener program that will make some sense out of all of this mess. I assure you that the industry under your direction will do all that it can to help develop a program that is at once reasonable and fair to all concerned.

[The following articles were supplied by Senator McGovern and referred to on p. 147.]

[From The Washington Post, Thursday, Mar. 9, 1978]

FARMERS "WORKING" WASHINGTON IN SHIFTS AS THEY LOBBY FOR PRICE PARITY

(By Blaine Harden)

The farmers from Kansas keep coming to Washington and going home on a flight they have dubbed, without much affection, the "farmer's special."

From Kansas towns like Weskan and Goodland, wheat and corn farmers drive at night about 190 miles to the Denver airport. They board TWA Flight 252 and take off at 1:45 a.m. They arrive at Dulles airport at 6:55 a.m. "You get a hangover on that flight," says Kenneth Palmgren, a farmer from Goodland, "whether you drink or not."

The farmers who came by the thousands to Washington in mid-January to protest low farm prices have not all given up and gone home. According to the leaders of the American Agriculture Movement, there have been between 500 and 700 farmers from across the country in Washington since the tractorcades and mass rallies ended Jan. 21.

By car, bus, train and flights like the "farmer's special," the farmers are recycling themselves to maintain a presence in Washington. Leonard Cox, who farms 640 acres of irrigated land in Weskan, flew home Friday night, having completed his third week-long tour of Washington. He plans to fly back next week. Each round-trip costs Cox $228, but he says farmers back home are helping him with his expenses.

A desk clerk at the Skyline Inn on Capitol Hill where farmers have been staying said about 50 farmers check in on Sunday nights, they check out on Friday and a new group of 50 or so checks in again Sunday. Other motels in the Capitol Hill area report much the same thing.

In Washington, this past week scores of farmers have testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee, saying they are going broke and asking for a farm bill that will give 100 percent parity on their farm prices. Parity is a measure of farmer's purchasing power, with 100 percent parity meaning that farm prices would be high enough to give farmers the same purchasing power they had in the 1910-14 base period used for measurement.

The farmers, according to movement spokesman Greg Suhler, a wheat farmer from Springfield, Colo., "have knocked on just about every door in town" over the

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.