U.S.A. AGRICULTURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 May 1938, Page 12

U.S.A. AGRICULTURE

HELPING THE HARMER. 'I ho United State!- inis U'.huo.OOO •.aimers- '1 hey cultivate I’MU.OOU.OOU acres with crops, and ns-,- more limit r. thousand million Tor grazit/e. They teed 12~.n<JU.on(i Americans, supply •hem with all the cor.on ami !ohu<-eo they require, ami hail - Um wool for ch.-thing. Americans are great meat, caters, ami ninety-live per cent, of it comes from the home ranches. When they have saislied the nation. Amerilul! farmers semi enough of their produce übiuad to make up u third oJ the national expoits (writes the New York correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald.'’/.

This picture is intended io stress the importance of the farmer in this great community- He is generally rcgaidetl as an individualist, whose isolation has made him self-reliant am! restless under control. Rut. for some years now the New Dealers have been casting their yoke upon him. and it cannot he -said that he dislikes it. Whether Im will < <miinm- ac<i ui'-.-c-.'nl ijepeim' on whether th.’ "benelils that the Roosevelt Adminidration is trying to give, him prove real or a will o’ the wisp.

The latest "beiielit” is enshrined in the Agiictilural Adjustment Act of JI/1.-IS, which is the most ambitious farm telief experiment yet attempted. Tim President signed it last month with a. statement of policy: "To assure ngi iculi.il/e a fair share ol an increasing national income, to provide consitmcis with abundant supplies of food and fibre. to .stop waste of soil, and to reduce the gap between huge surpluses and disastrous shortages.” Thus Mr Roosevelt launched the Ever Normal' Granary plan. Io which the Sect clary of Agriculture gate bis l.hmsing with Hm words. "Never again

• hould tit' - cmisumcrs <>f meat and the t retiuceni of livctilm |< miffei’ limm price cxtromes like thmm that re-

.lilted in Hie surplus'.;-; oi 19,",2. followed bi' t he feed shortages of lhe t!'3l ami 1936 drought years.'’ r ) he' Farm Bill, which was passed by the Mouse of Repi csentatives in foui hours, is a complicated measure of 62,009 words. Il is doubtful if many of those Congressmen who xcted for the measure had read it. but it is no routine bill that, they have made law. it. is far wider in its application to tlie farmer’s daily work than was flic old A.A.A. and lhe new Act is frankly criticised as “regimented agriculture.“ ’Phis "regimentation” is inevitable because if u normal granary is maintained despite the ruins and lhe droughts from Heaven, the Department oi. Agriculture must he very busy supervising the crops and their producers. Crop control lies at the core of the bill. It is applied to cotton, -wheat, tobacco, maize, and rice. When supplies in any of these products arc likely to exceed by a small percentage what the department considers a "normal" crop, reduction becomes automatic. Parallel provisions in the new law are those for compulsory Government loans. They must be made on a cotton, wheat, or maize crop if any is in excess of the normal demand, or if the price is less than a stated percentage of 1909-1911 purchasing power.

FINING THE FARMER. Mr Howard 11. Tolley, Agriculture Adjustment Administrator, describes tho application of the law to the 1938 crops as follows: —“The law puts the normal supply of cotton at about 18,200,000 bales, apd since the actual supply for the current marketing year is about 2-1.500,000 bales, quotas will be effective on the 1938 crop unless

reject'd by the growers’ voting. Any Larmtr marketing more than hi.quota not only loses all benefit payments, hut pays a. tine of two cent.-- a pound this year and three cents next year. The 1938 wheat quota will be announced on July Im but is tentatively put. at. >’>:!,s”L’.<.nJU acres intended lo pj educe ROOJJtJO.LM”-’ bushels. The quotas are effective when supplies tot a.nv yai * vceed !»so.iH)(i,9itn bushels. 'I lie rat-- of payment for co-operating iar/neis is 12 cents a bushed within the individual farmer’s wheat allotment." li. is tlm Goveinineilt’s aim to raise the larmer’s income. which last year was less than ri.uuiiAlOo.iji.iudol. out of a national income approaching 7ti,0u0.0(/o,oou dollars. The President argues that, if the farming community makes more money, then prosperity is reilected in enhanced purchasing power which benefits the industrial workers. The argument is. of course, irrefutable, but it is by no means certain i hat the new measure will achieve this end. Dairy farmers are loud in their complaints, fearing that the laud withdrawn from the major mops will be m-cd Wr producing more milk. eggs, and cl/ee./c. thus adding to an already overmowoed market and ; educing prices.

('top restriction has already been fried. and stimulates production abroad, as has happened with cotton, so that to-day cotton farmers suffer mostly from foreign competition in world markets. Tin* National Grange, one of tin- olib'sl of the oldest farm

/ rgmiisations in the country, opposed tlm Bill. It is decried as a "policy of scarcity." The A-A.A. took some BG.TOO.UOt) acres out. of production in two years, when more than 0,100,000 hogs, l,:;oo,uui» cattle, and 2.100,000 sheep were destroyed. Between March. 1933, mm December. 1937. food prices inpreasi-d 38 per cent. DOING SOMETHING.” However, there is such a deepseated feeling thiil "something" must l.e done, for the farmer, that politicians. while giumbiing al the Administration remedy for his ills, dare net vole against, it. One Republican opponent said in the House of Representatives: "This bill is going to do mere to destroy-the Democratic Party and bring; Republicans to power than anything so far attempted by the Administration.”

Tlie enormous powers granted to tlie Secretary of Agriculture are declared to resemble those enjoyed by the Minister of Agriculture in Germany. There the farmer may not keep a pint of milk for himself, and must buy back the skim milk he needs for his pigs- In this country, on January 1, the A-A.A. announced' minimum wages for sugar beet workers harvesting the 1938 crop if. producers wished to qualify for payments under (ho quota.

The mandator,y crop loans, hitherto discretionary, may involve the Government in stupendous losses. The President, when signing the measure, put the Government’s aim idealistically, when he said: “We are agreed that the real and lasting progress of the people of the farm and city alike will come, not from the old familiar cyclo of glut and scarcity, not from the succession of boom and collapse, 1 ut from the steady and sustained increases in production and fair exchange of things that human beings need.” Time will show if the greatest development in agricultural planning over attempted in this country succeeds in this aim. The majority of experts competent, to judge an extremely intricate and difficult subject view lhe Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 with misgivings.