The municipal territory of Cantalapiedra (Salamanca) is located in the northwestern part of that province and has a surface of 7,046 hectares (17,400 acres). The land of this territory, practically flat, is cultivated as dry farming, usually in three-crop rotation: fallow, cereals and pulses or oats; the working animals are mostly mules; the number of tractors before the consolidation, in spite of the splendid conditions of the land for mechanization, did not exceed seven.

Property of the land was divided, although not to the point prevailing in other regions. The dissemination, on the other hand, could be considered as high; the average surface of the lots of land was approximately 1 hectare (2.5 acres), and the number of land lots per owner averaged 16; there were 38 owners who posessed more than 50 lots, and some possessed over 250 lots. The total number of these lots was some 5,600, distributed among 330 owners.

The attempts of the farmers of Cantalapiedra to have their lands consolidated are not new; as far back as 1917 the first basis for a consolidation project was considered, but the project was not carried through. When the law of December 20, 1952, was published, they decided to avail themselves of its benefits, and voluntarily applied for consolidation on February 1, 1953.

On September 30, 1953, the Central Commission on Land Consolidation approved the preliminary report prepared by the field working team of that Service, and on October 2, 1953, a decree declared to be of "public utility" the land consolidation in the municipal territory of Cantalapiedra.

The local commission and the operating subcommission were organized in July 1953 and carried out the investigation of ownership and the classification of lands; once the values corresponding to each kind of land were established and the coefficients for compensation were fixed by an order from the Ministry of Agriculture dated December 13, 1954. The inquiry on the basis for the consolidation was carried out in August 1953.

In November 1953 there was organized the Technical Commission which took care of drafting parts I and II of the plan for works and land improvement, and both parts were successively approved, on January 14, and October 26, 1954. The improvements included 36,636-meters of main water canals, 10,605 meters of new main roads, 91,284 meters of service roads, the installation of a system of water troughs, the electrification of the family gardens, and the improvement of the irrigation system.

The new road system having been planned, the preliminary project of consolidation was then prepared and the new lots of replacement were determined. Upon completion of the public hearings on the preliminary project in December of 1954, and acceptance and approval by the cultivators themselves, the new land boundaries were established in the spring of 1955 on the lands under the fallow rotation, the ensuing step on the cereal rotation crop being postponed for the fall of the same year, thus making final one of the first attempts for renewal and complete improvement of Spanish agriculture.

Mr. WHITE. Spain is a very old nation. Down through the centuries farms have been subdivided through inheritance, passing from the father to the son. And that has the result of bringing down farms into small tracts of land scattered in many directions from the village.

The Land Consolidation Service, an agency of the Spanish Government, is attempting to consolidate these lands into more workable sized family unit farms.

In addition, through the National Colonization Institute, an agency of the Spanish Government, an effort is made to develop undeveloped land where the soil resources have favorable potential for future crop production, by using heavy equipment to prepare the land, so that it can be farmed, and settling farmers in family units in that way.

This is especially necessary where farms are small and where there are some areas that can be developed even into irrigated tracts by taking advantage of the water that is now being wasted.

Spain is an arid country, and suffers from soil impoverishment, growing out of farming over the centuries.

Another effort in another part of the ICA program in agriculture in Spain is the development of an agricultural extension service. This service was created in 1956, and to date there are 20 areas in Spain that have assistance to farmers through Extension Service teaching. And in the years ahead, an extension of the Extension Service system is projected, and for the coming year to 20 new areas.

Mr. THOMPSON. Operated by the Spanish Government?

Mr. WHITE. Yes, and it is patterned very closely after the Extension Service system in the United States.

The Spanish Government, through its own research, has down through the years developed many facts that would be helpful to its agriculture, but there has been no way, no good way of bringing these facts out to the people on the land, and translating them in a way that farmers can understand them and take advantage of them.

That is the basis for trying to establish an agricultural extension service. Also, because of soil impoverishment, and the degree of soil erosion in Spain, in 1955, through ICA help and assistance, the Spanish Government undertook to establish a soil conservation service. It is designed to help the small farmer practice better soil and water conservation practices.

Part of this program has been training Spanish nationals technically in the conduct of conservation programs.

We have sent to Spain some outstanding Americans to help train Spanish Government officials, including Dr. Bennett, who formerly headed the Soil Conservation Service in the United States.

Sixty-two percent of Spain's 28 million people live on farms. Most of the agriculture in Spain, about 90 percent of it, is dryland agriculture, and the principal crops are grain crops.

The average size of the farm is 22 acres, and a little more than half of the farmers are owner-operators. Besides grain, the principal crops are potatoes, vegetables, fruit and cotton.

Mr. KREUGER. What are the grains that they raise?

Mr. WHITE. Principally wheat and feed grains, of the small grain type, barley and such as that. Their agriculture is somewhat comparable to agriculture in Arizona or New Mexico or western Texas. Their climate pattern is somewhat similar. Under irrigation they produce cotton and rice and alfalfa and vegetables and crops of that kind.

Farm power in Spain is principally animal power. There has been some mechanization on farms that would justify the use of a tractor, but that has been and will continue to be a limited operation, because of the size of the farms and the scarcity of additional land to convert to agricultural uses.

The agricultural program for the year 1956 shows that $329,950 of ICA funds were devoted to the agricultural phase of the program in Spain. There are 25 projects on which there were 15 Americans employed, on short-term assignments, to assist the Spanish Government, and there were 114 Spanish nationals brought to the United States for short-term training, so that they might return and do a better job for their own Government.

Literacy is very high in Spain. About 85 percent of the people can read and write.

Agriculture is typical Mediterranean, characterized by the dry climate, the poverty of the soil, and the high cost of developing to irrigation. It is being demonstrated that improvements can be made in Spanish production by the application of fertilizers and by more modern methods of farming. Spain is deficient on bread, and they have a great interest in trying to produce more to meet the increasing population requirements.

Spain occasionally has to buy wheat, but it is seldom in a position to buy wheat, because of the scarcity of foreign exchange.

There are only about 55,000 tractors in the country for use on the larger farms that I mentioned a moment ago.

Fifty-four percent of the total exports from Spain are agricultural exports, and for this reason agricultural production is important to Spain's economy. The export crops are citrus fruits, olive oil, olives, grapes, wine and vegetables, fish, almonds and so forth.

Spain imports cotton, occasionally wheat when required, edible oils when the olive oil crop fails, tobacco, coffee, potatoes and bananas. Living in Spain from the standpoint of food consumption is below the average for Europe. The caloric intake is about 2,500 calories per day compared to perhaps a round 3,000 calories, or 20 percent higher in the remainder of the countries in Western Europe.

With respect to actual development on the land, there have been loans and grants of United States owned pesetas obtained from the sale of United States agricultural surpluses to date of approximately the equivalent of $10 million in round figures, directed at the conservation of Spain's soil resources, including reforestation, agricultural extension, land consolidation, but not towards the production of specific surplus crops.

This, I believe, Mr. Chairman, summarizes the high lights of the Spanish agricultural situation in the ICA program in Spain.

Mr. THOMPSON. Is there any comparison at all between a typical family farmer in Spain and one in this country?

Mr. WHITE. A typical Spanish farmer would have about 22 acres. That would probably be no more than the size of an average farm in many parts of this country. His family would be somewhat larger than the average American family.

Their farm income would be exceedingly low, and they would be fully employed working intensively on their small farm with hoes and hand implements, supplemented by mules generally, sometimes a horse and small plow tools, attempting to grow enough wheat for their own family requirements, and a little to sell, and also produce other things that they would need generally to consume.

Mr. THOMPSON. The farmer in this country, of course, in normal times is a pretty well established businessman.

He goes to the bank every year and borrows what money he needs to operate; he sends his children to college in many cases.

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. He is a pretty substantial citizen.
Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. Is there any hope that the family farmer abroad will ever reach that point, or is that something that is pretty well limited to America?

Mr. WHITE. That is something that is limited to America and certain other countries in the Western Hemisphere, like Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and countries like Australia and New Zealand, particularly these countries.

It applies only in Spain and other European countries to a small proportion of the farmers who have a sufficient acreage of land that they can farm in a manner somewhat similar to American farming.

But most of the farmers in the world have 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-acre farms. Millions of them have only 2 or 3 acres. This would be the typical farm.

So they have no hope realistically speaking of having farms that would be similar to American farms in size.

Mr. THOMPSON. Is there any tendency, as has been said in some quarters in this country, to let people who have money to buy up the farms and then hire people to run them?

I think you have prefaced your remarks with something very pertinent when you said something about political stability. Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. Within the Nation, tying into the family farm? Mr. WHITE. We find that the governments of the undeveloped countries are motivated by a strong desire to help the masses of their people. I spoke about the people being impatient, wanting quick gains, having seen and heard and read how progress has gone forward in other parts of the world, the last 25 or 50 years, and yearning for these same accomplishments for themselves.

Since 80 to 85 percent of the people in the underdeveloped nations are farmers, rural people, the Government's attention is centered on how to help this large segment of their population. The problem has been and will continue to be how to provide for a growing population. Each 10 or 12 years these nations will have 25 percent more people. They are now teeming with millions of people-80 million in Indonesia, 384 million people in India, 80 million people in Pakistan, nearly 90 million people in Japan.

The land fragmentation problem in Spain created through inheritance, is continually dividing the land into smaller and smaller fractions. Some of the plots are no wider than a rod and may be 30 rods long. The farmer who inherits such tracts is required to travel from one to another, perhaps a few kilometers, going back and forth during the day, wasting a lot of his time in traveling, in trying to farm. That is why consolidation is being considered and practised, as I have illustrated here, in Spain.

There is hardly no basis in countries outside of the Western Hemisphere for buying land and mechanizing it into the kind of commercial farms existing in the United States for the reasons, first, land is not very readily available for capital investment, and, too, the interest rate is high compared to the United States; it is discouraging.

The interest rates of 12 to 20 percent are common; interest rates of 30 to 40 percent per annum, are quite usual. That mitigates against capital development.

Second, the people who own the land treasure the land and hold it as something very worthwhile; so buying land is not easy to do.

Third, labor is quite low in price, as compared to American wages. Farm tractors are high compared to the United States, in price. They are particularly difficult to maintain and operate with their limited knowledge of mechanization, their lower capability to understand mechanized equipment and the importance of maintenance, the lack of repair shops and repair parts and adequately trained mechanics, and the development of all of this is much more difficult in Spain and other countries than people would normally expect.

These are handicaps that mitigate against the consolidation of land outside of the Western Hemisphere into large farms.

Furthermore, a large part of the land that is in big blocks is owned by the government as public domain, or like in Iran, held by the Shah. I was in Iran only 2 or 3 weeks ago, and there like elsewhere, the Government is making available the public domain or the Shah his own private land, for settlement; and in all of these cases, all of the cases we have worked with-it is settlement of family-sized farms. There is some allocation of princely lands into 'family-sized farms. In places like India, Taiwan, and Iran and other places they have passed laws that require breaking up large private estates. In the case of India it applies to all farms over 100 acres; in Iran the plats

were 120 acres.

These characterize somewhat the development on a worldwide basis. Mr. THOMPSON. Those of us who are tied to the family farm in this country are not so far wrong, are we?

Mr. WHITE. That is certainly the view of the foreign governments. Mг. THOMPSON. Are there any questions, gentlemen?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I would like to ask a question. How about the dairy industry in Spain. You haven't mentioned that?

Mr. WHITE. There is an opportunity for expanding milk production in Spain to meet the requirements of Spain for fresh milk. One of the greatest dietary deficiencies in Spain is the lack of animal proteins. The diet is too high in food grains, relatively, and too low in animal proteins.

Through Public Law 416 and through title III of Public Law 480, the voluntary agencies 3 or 4 years ago began a free milk distribution program in Spain, using American dried milk as a source of supply,