promoting, especially as between family-unit operations and various other types of farming, in size and organization; and the extent of our employment of people and expenditure of funds in these programs.

The subcommittee would greatly appreciate having you and members of your food and agriculture staff present this story to us. If it is convenient for you to do so, we shall set a hearing for Tuesday, July 16, for this purpose. With every good wish, I am,

Sincerely yours,

CLARK W. THOMPSON, Chairman, Family Farms Subcommittee.

Mr. THOMPSON. In response to that letter, Mr. Hollister has delegated Mr. White, Associate Director of the ICA Food and Agriculture Office to come before this committee and explain what is going on in Europe.

For the benefit of our new members, to whom we are very glad to extend a warm welcome, I want to say this: As we studied the family farm problem and as we discovered all through the country where we held hearings, there is a problem that is peculiar to the man who wishes to farm the place that he has owned or that he has rented, to use only such outside help as may be necessary in the planting or the harvesting season.

It is a unit which is handled from start to finish by the family itself. We have run into various problems. Among other things we find some, not the Family Farm Committee so far as I know, but on the Committee on Agriculture, who feel that the only hope for American agriculture is in, not the collective farm exactly, but in the privately owned large tract of land on which employed labor does the work.

I believe that I speak for all of the members of the old Subcommittee on Family Farms when I say we do not accept that at all.

We are unwilling to visualize the farm as a part-time job for anybody. We do not like the approach that the only way to make a family farm work is to have it located near enough some industrial unit so that the husband, or the wife, or the son, or somebody in the family can go and work part time.

If that is the final answer, we have not yet accepted it.

The people who settled our country came here to get away from an old feudal system that is familiar to those of us who studied the English common law.

It may have had some merit. It did not have the merit of independence.

I doubt very much if employed farmers who are working for wages only will ever be completely satisfied with anything but the independence that has kept them on the farm ever since the Nation was first settled.

Since our country is now going abroad to try to reestablish or to improve the agricultural systems in the various countries of Europe, it occurred to us that, perhaps, we could go back to the old country, see what our own qualified experts are doing, what is being accomplished, and just what foreign agriculture is now like.

It is with that thought, Mr. White, that we asked you to come to us today. We appreciate your presence. I suggest that you proceed as you wish, and then after you have given us your prepared statement, if you will submit to the questions of the committee, which will take the form of a round table discussion more than anything else, we will appreciate it very much.

STATEMENT OF E. D. WHITE, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ADMINISTRATION; ACCOMPANIED BY R. H. DAVIS, COMMISSIONER, JOINT COMMITTEE ON RURAL RECONSTRUCTION, TAIWAN, J. P. EMERSON, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR, FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL OFFICE, ICA, AND W. S. MIDDAUGH, CHIEF, AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS DIVISION, ICA

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, my name is E. D. White, Associate Director of the Office of Food and Agriculture, International Cooperation Administration, Department of State.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a very brief general statement. ICA programs in agriculture are concentrated in the less developed countries of the world. In these countries agriculture is the principal occupation of the people and is the foundation for national economic development and political stability. Hence, a primary objective of ICA programs is to assist agriculture and thereby improve the welfare. of the masses of rural people and strengthen the national economies of cooperating countries.

To achieve these broad objectives, ICA agricultural programs are directed to help the countries develop institutions that will encourage and enable farm families to increase and diversify production and to improve home living. Emphasis is upon self-help that requires a minimum of United States aid and a maximum use of local resources. The agricultural institutional changes needed in these countries are those in which the United States has achieved outstanding success in helping its own farmers; namely, agriculture extension, credit and cooperatives, education, and research.

By stimulating the establishment and development of these institutions, United States technicians help the cooperating countries create the services by which farmers can solve their individual and group problems largely through their own efforts. National economic development inevitably will follow.

ICA policy for aiding agriculture development reflects the traditional American philosophy for creating and helping family-sized farm units.

In many countries, age-old patterns of land tenure have resulted in oppressive conditions of tenancy upon the masses of farmer-cultivators. Experience shows such patterns are not changed quickly; above all, any reforms must be accepted and carried out with wholehearted support by the Government.

Tenure changes take many forms-creation of economical units through consolidation of small fragments of land, breakup of large landed estates in other cases, subdividing of public lands into economical units, introduction of cadastral surveys and issuance of land titles, establishment of extension and credit services for small farmers, and the enforcement of equitable arrangements for crop sharing among tenants and landlords.

Striking accomplishments in one or more of these phases have been registered in the Philippines, Taiwan, Iran, Lebanon, and Spain. In certain other countries with equally serious tenure problems, progress is impeded by lack of understanding and by strong vested interests, but our technicians offer such advice and assistance as seems appropriate and diplomatic.

Current ICA assistance in agricultural development is extended to 41 countries and 5 territories. Initial programs are being developed for four new countries-Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, and Burma. Except for Spain, Yugoslavia, and Greece in Europe, the current programs are in the Far East, Near East and south Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

These latter regions generally are underdeveloped and are trying to meet recently awakened aspirations of their peoples.

The keystone of ICA aid is technical assistance by United States specialists on regular ICA rolls and through ICA-financed contracts with United States land-grant colleges. Transfer of American know-how through guidance and training supported by limited quantities of equipment and supplies for demonstration purposes promises to be the most economical and lasting aid that we can give these countries.

Our assistance can be broken down into several types of activities or projects which in each country is planned as a coordinated program, fitted into the overall country program.

We do not attempt to assist every phase of a country's agricultural program, preferring to focus our assistance on the most pressing problems for which the United States has special competence to help.

These activities are agricultural extension, credit and cooperatives, education, research, crop and livestock improvement and diversification, use of soil and water resources, home improvements, youth work modeled after the 4-H Club program, forestry and fisheries development, and strengthening agencies administering agricultural programs.

An initial task has been to reorient the thinking of Government officials and technicians so they can put knowledge to work for people through extension of Government services to the masses of farmers on the land.

In fiscal year 1956, the last year for which we have complete figures, the worldwide program was as follows: 743 United States technicians overseas (exclusive of approximately 150 college contract technicians), 501 agricultural projects, and 1,242 foreign technicians in agriculture sent to the United States or third countries for short-term training. The total dollar cost for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries programs in fiscal year 1956 was $68,083,584.

The accomplishments to date are not easy to tabulate on a worldwide basis, but rather impressive achievements can be documented for individual countries.

Typical countries examples, describing the ICA agricultural programs and their accomplishments can be given for representative countries situated in four major regions.

For all countries, the most important intangible benefit is the new hope engendered in the hearts of the masses of farm families that their welfare can be improved and that their governments, with United States assistance, are prepared to help them help themselves. This basic change in spirit, from despair to hope, is reflected in a few more pesos or lira or rupees in cash and additional food and clothing for the family.

The degrees of accomplishment naturally vary from country to country as affected by the educational and economic levels from which programs are started and the capacity of the government to cooperate effectively.

Important factors most felt by American technicians on the ground are the aspirations and independence of the local government and its people.

Often their aspirations are for large developmental projects they have seen in the more advanced countries of the Western World with too little consideration for the capacity of the country to utilize such large projects in its present status of development.

Likewise, both governments and peoples of underdeveloped areas are impatient for quick progress through programs that they hope will bring the kind of development in a few years that it took the United States and other western nations centuries to achieve.

All these factors must be taken into account by the ICA technicians as they try to influence foreign governments to undertake realistic programs that will result in sound progress. This is not always easy in cooperative programs where the participating countries are equal partners, proud of their sovereignty, often imbuded with newly achieved independence, and impatient with programs seemingly lacking in spectacular results such as the construction of large capital facilities.

Mr. Chairman, that finishes the general statement. I am prepared to discuss particularly the application of the ICA programs in agriculture in specific countries, if you would like, or any way that you wish to proceed, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. I personally would like to hear more about Europe than I would about the Far East. However, I am only one of the committee. It is a little difficult to know where to start. I wonder if we could take a typical European country, for instance, France, or Spain, and draw a comparison between the family farm there and in this country?

Mr. WHITE. We can take Spain, if you like.

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes; all right.

Mr. WHITE. There is an IČA program in Spain. There are nearly 221⁄2 million farms in Spain. Ninety-five percent of the farms are 110 acres in size or less. And they represent about one-third of the farm area.

I have a chart that I will pass around that shows the number of farms and the acres in the farms, and the extent of the land area. I will submit that for the record.

(The chart referred to is as follows:)

Mr. WHITE. The chart shows that out of 2,485,000 farms in the country, 1,200,000 farms are under 11 acres in size. And another

96221-57-2

quarter of a million are between 11 and 22 acres.

And on the large size there are 18,000 farms out of the 21⁄2 million that are between 550 and 2,000 acres, and 5,000 farms over 2,000 acres in size.

There is in Spain a Land Consolidation Service that is interested in bringing about more economic units of farms considering that the main problem in Spain is uneconomic units, because they are too small.

There is one project that I would like to describe. The Government of Spain with ICA assistance undertook to consolidate 5,581 small tracts of land that were scattered over a large area, represented by a number of holders that attempted to farm these fractional pieces of land. These 5,581 tracts were consolidated into 474 farms that had about 25 acres each.

May I go off the record?

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. THOMPSON. Let us put that data in the record at this point. (The data referred to are as follow:)

Situation before the consolidation of ownership

Total surface of the municipal territory: 7,046 hectares; 17,397 acres. Total surface of the area to be consolidated: 6,530 hectares; 16,121 acres. Total number of landowners concerned: 330.

Number of farmers: 200.

Date of the decree declaring of "public utility" the land consolidation in the zone of Cantalapiedra (O. B. No. 309): October 2, 1953.

Date of organization of the local commission: July 2, 1953.

Date of organization of the technical commission: November 13, 1953.

Date of the first hearings on the basis for the consolidation: August 11, 1953. Date of the second hearings on the preliminary project of consolidation: March 24, 1954.

LIST OF LAND IMPROVEMENTS AND WORKS

System of main collector canals (36,636 meters)

System of main roads (10,605 meters)

System of watering troughs (6 wells with watering troughs for large and small animals)

System of service roads (91,284 meters)

Electrification of the family gardens (1,300 meters of high tension line, transformer, and 400 meters of low tension line)

Improvement of irrigation in the present family gardens.