immediate consideration. Thereafter protection should be extended as rapidly as possible to producers of all types of farm commodities. We favor parity price supports for perishables through production payments direct to producers. In balancing operating costs with cash receipts, a whole series of supplementary measures should be considered to make up the sum total of 100 percent parity. These include: soil conservation practice payments, crop insurance, commodity loans, production payments, and surplus purchases for export, school-lunch and school-milk programs. We also favor upgrading the inadequate diets of the Nation's 15 million people with low incomes through a Federal food allotment plan. To place independent operators in position to better compete with agribusiness we call for all possible assistance to development, protection, and expansion of farm cooperatives. We do not feel that big business farmers need the underpinning of Federal aid. Therefore we advocate limiting production payments to the first $25,000 of sales by an individual producer and in no case should such payments exceed $2,500 per farm in a given year; 56.7 percent of California's commercial farms in 1954 grossed less than $25,000. There should also be appropriate ceilings on soil bank and soil conservation practice payments. There is no necessity to wait for formulation of a complete family-farm program before taking action. Passage of several bills now before Congress would go a long way toward alleviating distress among family-farm operators. The Metcalf omnibus farm bill H. R. 6024, provides 100 percent parity income protection for producers of all farm commodities by means of workable combinations of supplementary payments, price support loans, purchase agreements, and purchases. This fulfills the basic requirement that men and women who produce the food and fiber essential to the Nation's growth and welfare be assured that their work, skills, and investment will yield them a living comparable to nonfarm occupations. H. R. 6024 would provide a market for our abundance through a national food allotment stamp plan, give two half pints of free milk daily to each school child, set up an international food and raw materials reserve, and ensure greater farm exports through the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act (Public Law 480). It would set up a federally administered, farmer-financed crop insurance program on a national scale. It would give aging farmers access to improved social security coverage. It would overcome gluts and bottlenecks through commodity by commodity adjustment of production to demand. Marketing goals and conservation reserves would be established along with a national security reserve of food and fiber. It would encourage farmers to construct, acquire, and operate farmer-owned cooperative facilities through loans and technical assistance. Our committee is also on record for Senate Joint Resolution 24, a "family farm bill of rights" (Senators Humphrey, Murray, Mansfield, Clark, and Magnuson) and S. 1533, a "family yardstick credit bill" (Humphrey, Murray, Chavez, Hill, Johnston, Kerr, Long, Magnuson, Mansfield, Neuberger, Sparkman, and Carroll). Senate Joint Resolution 24, a statement of farm policy to be adopted by Congress, calls for the right to improved standards of rural living, reasonable protection against natural hazards, public cooperation and assistance in saving the soil, a long-range program of food storage to encourage abundant production, farm benefits from expanding world trade, the right to extend agricultural free enterprise through cooperative action, and the right of assurance that land reclamation development will result in establishing family farms, not factories in the fields. The "family farm yardstick credit bill" would revive abandoned USDA programs for assisting farmers and creditors with voluntary farm-debt adjustment procedures; reinstate the policy of adjusting repayment schedules on farm loans based on ability to pay; establish a rural adjustment credit program for farmrelated small businesses as well as for farmers and farm cooperatives; create a comprehensive family farm redevelopment program in the 500 most povertystricken rural counties; lower interest rates to a maximum of 5 percent and expand loan authorizations for FHA farm ownership and farm operating loans for individuals not able to borrow through commercial channels. General programs enumerated would place a floor under the present unbalance where operating costs in all too many instances exceed prices received for a year's farm production. However, there are problems in large numbers of commodities which require special evaluation and congressional action. Congress has recognized this fact in regard to the Sugar and Wool Acts. Historically the programs developed for tobacco, rice, corn, wheat, peanuts, cotton, cheese, butter, and powdered milk and eggs take certain special factors of storage, exports, imports and yields per acre into consideration, in establishing the type and volume of Government loans and disposal. California probably leads the Nation in the number of specialized farm commodities which are produced for local as well as for national and international markets. (See appended document.) Of some 250 such commodities, Federal support programs serve only a very small percentage. To attempt to meet grower needs and in line with Federal and State statutes, 14 Federal and 29 State marketing orders are in operation in California for some 30 different farm commodities. They range from disease control and quality grading to advertising and promotion, marketing quotas, and surplus disposal programs. All require approval of a majority of the producers involved and are administered by State or Federal Government agencies and farmer advisory committees. Recent trends in greater nonfarmer, corporation-controlled production of fryers, turkeys, and eggs have created such price-depressing national surpluses as to require regulation at the Federal level. Our committee supports efforts of poultry and egg growers to stabilize production and income through such Federal farmer-controlled measures as H. R. 9380 (Auchincloss) and of turkey growers to improve their economic position through H. R. 5561 (Sisk). We likewise view with approval efforts of national milk producer organizations to work out similar legislation to relieve the impact of price-depressing manufactured milk surpluses on those who produce for both the fluid and manufactured milk market. In California and other semiarid States, ample low-cost water for irrigation is basic to farm productivity. Programs to provide and protect the water supply of family-operated farms are as important as those which provide income protection, for without water there would be no crops to produce income. Our committee is especially concerned with attempts of corporation farms and other excess-land owners to evade and eliminate the 160-acre limitation clause of Federal reclamation law. Some 30 corporations with holdings of more than 5,000 acres each and totaling close to 750,000 irrigable acres in our San Joaquin Valley have ceaselessly promoted publicity and pressure campaigns to evade or eliminate this basic feature of Federal reclamation law. Their lobbyists in Washington have succeeded in diverting many irrigation projects to Corps of Army Engineers' control where no acreage limit on project water is recognized. They influenced ex-Secretary of Interior Douglas McKay to approve a plan (later repudiated by Secretary Fred Seaton) which would have permitted excessland owners of the Kings River Basin to buy their way out of acreage limitation by lump-sum payment of some $15 million of the total $45 million Federal Pine Flat Dam and Reservoir costs. Passage of a proposed bill to make this plan effective would permit 9 huge corporation farms in a single local district to escape forever the excess-land law on 100,000 acres. Our committee is on record to uphold the 50-year-old 160-acre limitation law as an effective and necessary safeguard to prevent speculation in land benefited by Federal irrigation projects and to prevent monopolization of fertile land and water where the supply of both is limited. In such cases water must be divided among as many farms as possible to insure their future as well as to provide a livelihood for veterans and young farmers trying to establish themselves on the land. Reclamation law places no limit on a farmer's ability to grow. It only limits the amount of federally subsidized irrigation water he may get for his land. In California this amounts not to 160 acres, but to 320 for man and wife, and 160 acres more for each adult offspring. A farmer can grow crops on as many acres for which he can get water-from pumping and riparian rights-in addition to those for which he gets project water. The 1954 United States census shows 6,248 California farms, or 5 percent of more than 1,000 acres. Yet these large farms control nearly 75 percent of all the cultivated land in the State. Nearly 100,000, or 89 percent, of all California farms are less than 160 acres in size. The following acreages are considered economic units large enough to maintain a family: Oranges, 20 to 30 acres; peaches, prunes, apricots, plums, apples, 30 to 40 acres; grapes and raisins, 40 to 50 acres; alfalfa, 80 to 100 acres; cotton, 120 to 130 acres; grain (dry farmed), 320 acres; dairy (with irrigated pasture), 80 acres; poultry and turkeys require from 1 to 30 acres, depending on size of operation and whether they raise part of their feed, but here land and irrigation are not determining factors. More than 60 percent of California farms gross less than $25,000 a year. Because of high production costs, this figure is not comparable to a similar gross figure for other States. This should be taken into consideration when applying Federal farm programs to California. California's agricultural production exceeded $2.8 billion in 1956, the highest in the Nation. Together with its related industries, it constitutes the State's biggest industry. Yet our 130,000 farmers, as part of the Nation's 4,500,000 farmers, except for marketing cooperatives, are unable to affect price received for their year's investment, skills, and labor. This situation was sharply pointed out in the agricultural policy statement adopted by the National Grange convention in Colorado Springs November 11-20, 1957, which noted, "Farmers cannot pass along, in prices charged, their own capital, operating and living costs, their wages and taxes, or any charges for their management or the financial risks they take annually with drought, flood, frost, and the other well-known vagaries of nature." In June 1948, says the Grange, farmers got 50 percent of the retail price of the consumer's market basket. By early 1957, their share had dropped to 38 percent. The actual money value of what farmers received for their "market basket" commodities was reduced by $116 in 10 years. But during the same period, 1948-57, the share retained by handlers and processors increased by $115, and retail price dropped only $1, from $994 to $993. Farmers, in short, says the Grange, have been and are subsidizing the American economy. And while business profits and labor wages have been gaining, net farm income has been dropping—from $17.7 billion in 1948 to $11.6 billion in 1956, the last year for which figures are available. This depression of farm income, which falls heaviest on the independent farm family operation, cannot be prolonged and aggravated indefinitely. If it is, agriculture is likely to once again repeat its performance of the 1920's and earlier period when it led the rest of the Nation into a general economic crisis. This already appears to be a contributing factor to the acknowledged recession presently affecting our national economy. The November 15, 1957, issue of Agricultural Prices published by the United States Department of Agriculture, shows actual below-cost prices which the Nation's farmers received. On that date the national farm parity index had dropped to 81 percent. The percentage of parity for typical California crops was as follows: Appended is a statement issued by the California Crop and Livestock Reporting Service showing estimates of the production and farm value of the principal products of California farms in 1956 and the rank of our State's principal crops in relation to national production. We cordially invite your committee to hold a hearing or series of hearings in California so that working farmers may have an opportunity to testify regarding the encroachment of corporate farm enterprises and elimination of familyoperated farms, and to give the committee firsthand information about the unique cultural and marketing problems of our many commercial crops. Ranking of California's principal crops and livestock-California production in relation to national production in 19561 Percent of national production in 1954 as reported by 1954 Census of Agriculture. More recent estimates not available for States other than California. A. ESTIMATES OF THE PRODUCTION AND VALUE OF PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF CALIFORNIA FARMS IN 1956 NOTE. Some of the estimates of crop values and cash receipts in the above table are subject to minor revisions when more nearly complete data on production and prices become available. Besides the commodities listed, there are many relatively minor crops grown and a number of livestock and poultry commodities produced in the State for which official estimates are not made. Therefore, these data do not record total production nor total value of all farm commodities. The figures for crops listed include quantities and values of the portions of those crops fed to livestock and poultry on farms where grown, and thus relate to the entire crop in each case, whether or not sold or fed in the year produced. The value figures for livestock, poultry, and their products represent the cash receipts by producers from the sales of same during the calendar year 1956. Thus, a combined total of the values listed in the table would include some duplication between the values of crops grown and the receipts from the sales of livestock, poultry, and their products. A more acceptable measure of the overall annual value of the State's farm production is shown by the department's estimates of the cash receipts from producers' sales of farm products during the calendar year. In these are included estimates for minor commodities. These estimates for 1954, 1955, and 1956 are shown in the following. During the 27-year period 1930-56 inclusive, cash receipts from farm marketings by California farmers have exceeded those from any other State, except for the years 1940, 1941, 1942, 1947, and 1949 when California ranked second to Iowa in this respect. 19,000 tons.. 437,000 hundredweight.. 12, 600 15,487,900 pounds.. 876,000 hundredweight.. 1,983,000 hundredweight. 61,000 tons. 1,081,000 bushels (56 pounds). 7,155,000 pounds.. 1,834,000 hundredweight. 9,400 320,000 hundredweight.. 204,000 hundredweight.. 5,880 tons.. 4,770,000 pounds. 19,500,000 pounds. 13,600,000 pounds.. 7, 222, 000 7, 124, 000 6,905, 000 6, 430,000 6,083,000 6, 034, 000 5,729, 000 5,295,000 5,016, 000 4,875,000 4, 705, 000 4,553,000 4, 430, 000 4,085, 000 3,946, 000 3,649,000 3, 512,000 2,742,000 2,576,000 2, 337,000 1,993, 000 1,268,000 954,000 884,000 3, 439,000 3, 287,000 3, 103, 000 3,072, 000 2,772, 000 |