We import about three times what the countries of the European Common Market import and about four times what the U.S.S.R. import. We import the equivalent of 5 million head annually and this furnishes the beef diet for over 18 million people. The 1964 law is designed to guarantee a percent of the U.S. market to foreign countries. I don't think the people in this country should be expected to eat all the beef in the world, at the expense of bankruptcy of the American cattlemen. The effects of beef imports represent about 150 million acres of land that should not be in wheat and feed grains production. This would reduce our cropland more than 20 percent, helping relieve overproduction of wheat and feed grains, thus raise grain prices. In 1896 William Jennings Bryan said it best: Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in this country. I would like to interject one other thing. I want to read something from the book that was presented by the previous gentleman. I want to read one comment from the Parity book. It says: If common citizens understood what parity prices meant to the economy and not just to farmers, they would be out at the farm gate with shotguns to prevent any prices less than parity. Senator HODGES. Thank you for your statement. I hope you realize the philosophy which you are saying is one that I share. Mr. SLOAN. I realize it. Senator HODGES. It is so contrary to what is in the USDA generally that it is going to require a tremendous change for them to even understand what you are talking about, much less act differently. They would rather throw a bone. They may even add a little ham on it occasionally, but I think the real answer is for the farmer to begin to control his destiny instead of continuously having to ask for handouts and programs. It will take a long time to do that. I am glad to see that you are not going to give up and that you are not going to settle for less than a fair shake. Mr. SLOAN. I have read your proposal in your bill and I agree with lots of the aspects. I did not realize you would be chairman when I was presenting my testimony. I wish every Senator could have been here today and heard all these people's testimony because I think they have turned a deaf ear to us, to American agriculture. They do not know what the raw product means to the economy of this country. Senator HODGES. I hope it is understood that my comments certainly do not reflect the comments of the Agriculture Committee. It is nothing more than my opinion. I strongly believe that something needs to be done. I have my ideas of the best way to do it. I do not disagree about where we need to end up. It is interesting, William Jennings Bryan's statement. I think you are seeing grass growing in the cities. Mr. SLOAN. Yes, we have some small towns where it has already grown up in it. Ms. TRACY. I live in one. Three students graduated from our high school last year. That was the graduating class. We had banks, hardware stores the age group of my husband when he graduated, he is the only one that stayed in farming. But there was nothing left for that age person to go into agriculture for even at that time. Now we are faced with the closing of our schools. If we do that, there will be kids who will have to ride 60 miles in a schoolbus to go to another school. So I think your statement about these rural towns and stuff is important. Senator HODGES. When you set about as a government to make life intolerable and unacceptable to the farmers, which has been the policy since the 1930's, those people went to the cities and the enormous problems in the cities are due to the people who have left the farms. I have yet to talk with very many people who live in the city who wouldn't rather be back on the farm. The Government will be begging people to go back on the farm. We do not seem capable of handling this. Mr. SLOAN. If we were as inefficient in our farming operations as our Government is in moving, we sure wouldn't have any surplus today. Senator HODGES. Thank you, Mr. Sloan. Our next witnesses will be Robert Corn of Roswell, N. Mex., and Madlyn Cauhape of Hope, N. Mex. STATEMENTS OF ROBERT F. CORN, ROSWELL, N. MEX., AND MADLYN CAUHAPE, PRESIDENT, NEW MEXICO WOOL GROWERS ASSOCIATION, HOPE, N. MEX. Mr. CORN. I have a written statement. I will ask that it be entered in evidence.* Senator HODGES. It will be so entered. Mr. CORN. My name is Robert Corn. I am a sheep and cattle rancher from Roswell, N. Mex. I am not going to read the statement. I will use it as an outline. Maybe I can stay on the subject. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: I am pleased to be able to meet here with you and represent the sheep industry. I have been asked to do this by the American Agriculture Movement. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank this committee for their help in updating the Wool Act in recent legislation. Briefly stated, our objective is to expand the sheep industry to its fullest economic potential. In order to do this, there are several things that I cannot help but think here this morning that here is a segment of the industry that has always been in a deficit situation as far as production. We have never been able to produce as much wool and lamb as this country used forever. The highest it has ever been is 33 percent. Here we are still an industry, part of agriculture, that still has problems. You would think from this standpoint that if lack of production was the problem, that we certainly would be cured of any problems in the sheep industry, but this isn't the case. We have a long history in the sheep industry and I can crow a little bit from New Mexico because that is where the sheep industry began See p. 276 for the prepared statement of Mr. Corn, and p. 277 for the statement of Ms. Cauhape. more than 450 years ago when the Spanish Conquistadors brought sheep, Spanish Moreno, up the Rio Grande in their explorations into New Mexico. Several years ago I was getting ready for a convention of the New Mexico Wool Growers. In the office, I ran into a statement from a convention in 1917 and I found at that point that in New Mexico there were more than 311⁄2 million sheep at that time. Our present status is less than half a million. That is from our last census which I recollect seeing, so we have some problems in the industry. Of course, we have one little animal that probably bothers the sheep industry more than some of the other agriculture industry is and that is the coyote. Senator HODGES. Coyote. Mr. CORN. We are needing research in the sheep industry for marketing research, product development, predator research and biological research. I would like to take a minute here to point out that we have found in some cases that we are unable to follow through with budgeting on legislation and also some projects which have been started in the past-to make a couple of points on that, one is from our predator standpoint. When we had a ban on toxicants, we had quite a bit of money to fly in the Western States to help control the coyotes in the sheep areas. Since that time, we have lost most of these moneys and no longer have them for useful coyote control. One other area I would like to discuss is to say that in our experimental stations, I understand from newer budgets coming out, we have been cut in sheep research. I know of one instance, that is the Clay Center, which is a fairly new experimental station and of a substantial size to carry out large animal research, both biological and drugs, from the standpoint of drugs. They have a new facility there for finishing out some of the research and also an engineering building and they have both been built and they are quite adequate and have complete lab facilities and everything that goes with them. They are at a standstill right now in this particular area because there are no funds to man those scientist's posts that need to be carried on there. If we are going to interest young people to enter the sheep industry, we are going to have to carry out sufficient research and product development and have a favorable market. A favorable market alone is not going to bring the sheep industry to a healthy atmosphere because, particularly from the standpoint of the cows in the Western States because the more you make a sheep worth, the more you are going to lose everything you have from depredation, so the mathematics works against you. It has been quite interesting to me that we have here this morning talked a good deal about products that we have surpluses of, and here is the sheep industry setting in a deficit commodity and we have the same problem. Going back to 1917, I noticed on that particular agenda that some of the problems that they had at that time, we are still having, so there is something wrong somewhere along the line that we have not got some of these problems solved. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you gentlemen and if there are any questions on any of these things, I would be glad to try to answer them. Senator HODGES. Thank you for your statement. We are running a little short of time, so we probably had better go on. I appreciate very much your statement. Did you have anything you wanted to add? Ms. CAUHAPE. I am Madlyn Cauhape. I am president of the New Mexico Wool Growers Association. One thing that Bob did not mention, and I agree with everything he said, is that they say that the industry is dead anyway, why bother with it. I think we need the sheep industry. A sheep can prosper in country that cattle cannot prosper in. No other domestic animals can prosper in the kind of country that sheep can prosper in. You get food and clothing from sheep. It is the most efficient animal that we have. Lamb is very high-quality protein and it can be digested by people who cannot use other proteins. It is a product that we need to make more of instead of ignoring it. As Bob pointed out, it goes back to the predator. Give us some tools and we will do the work. Mr. CORN. I think in the Western States, certainly, we are going to have some control of the predator. Senator HODGES. There is massive acreage and there is no-what do you call it when they are born-lambing time? Ms. CAUHAPE. We can control the predator situation if we have the tools. Mr. CORN. They have taken our cheapest methods away from us. Ms. CAUHAPE. M. 44, which we are permitted to use, has 26 restrictions. By the time you do the paperwork, you do not have time to set your guns, so we don't look on it very favorably. Senator HODGES. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Your statement will be included in the record. Mr. Mickey Hammonds of Floydada, Tex. STATEMENT OF MICKEY HAMMONDS, FLOYDADA, TEX. Senator HODGES. What part is Floydada in, in the Panhandle? I am pleased to be able to represent my community of 786 farmers and the majority support the agriculture movement of the day. But I guess all the speeches this morning have covered some aspect of what I said, but if you all read any part of my speech, I would like for you to read the footnote concerning the quality of beef from Australia, from one of my neighbors who has personally been there. I believe it is on page 4. My complaint is that the Farm Act of 1977 assures big production and cheap prices for the production which does not aid in our problem which is below the cost of production. In this base acres thing, I am a diversified cowman there and due to drought and depressed wheat and corn prices from the year before, I went into vegetables and into hay. Now, since they are not major crops in our area, my normal crop acreage is lower than somebody who planted fence-to-fence wheat or cotton or any of the major crops. I think just because I made financial review and planted something else to protect myself, that this is a great injustice to me due to this new farm program. The old established farm organizations which I belong to and everything, helped write this bill, but our extension agencies in the United States and all over have come out with productions which show that these prices are below the cost of production in Texas. I am speaking of the ones in Texas. I have got my doubts where these referendum organizations that represent the farmers and the National Cotton Council, because they have leaned toward the administration because the Secretary of Agriculture has the final say so as to who get what money that we producers put in. Now we can ask for this money back and it takes time and redtape, but I meant that these organizations have done some good things for on chemicals and other things, but they have forgotten us on production and prices. I think they insured the textile mills a good supply of cotton. That is one example. Here is my gripe. In the beef industry, I think I am efficient enough to compete with Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and anybody else if they had to raise cattle on the same standards of the United States. Diethylstilbesterol, a hormone we used several years ago, is off the market. It is still allowed in Canada. I think I could compete with any farmer, worldwide, if they had to raise the food for our consumer at the same standard that the American farmer does. The Secretary of Agriculture of the present administration wanted to set 30 percent of the wheat acreage out. The State Department comes by and says no, just set out 20 percent. That will insure adequate price. If adequate insures below the cost of production, I don't see how we will survive today's time. On the cattle deal, with price freeze and price fixing, the USDA influences us by what they put out and what comes out in the newspaper. In 1974, I had a large number of cattle and they said "You overproduced. You have got to reduce." Most ranchers did. They went to the crops and it caused a surplus there. Then in January, 1978, they blamed it on the rancher again. "You overreacted. You killed off too many of your mother cows." We need a farm price that will guarantee us a profit over a long period of time, but this boom and bust has broken a lot of us farmers as you can tell in my statement of how I have had to reduce acreage. That is about all I have got to say, and it is a pleasure to talk to you gentlemen and everything. Senator HODGES. Let me just ask you a question or two. Of the farmers in your area, how many of them feel as strongly about what is happening now? Mr. HAMMONDS. I guess, Senator Hodges, every farmer I talk to on this realized our problems and support what we are doing and encouraged some of us to come up here to testify. I have not found one that did not think we had a problem. |