Mr. WICKERSHAM. What is the length of the growing season? Mr. DOHERTY. We ordinarily try to get a crop planted in April or the early part of May and start to harvest in the early part of October in Colorado. We do that in Montana, also. Of course, the farther north you go during that season, the more hours of sunlight you have during that period. We are continually working in our breeding operations and trying to improve the percentage of sugar, even in Colorado and Nebraska, and with some success, and I think that in Oklahoma that would become a major line of research, to get a variety that is adapted to that climate that would produce a rich beet. But certainly that is not too far south to grow sugar beets-very little farther south than we are. You grow a little cotton there.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes; the cotton-growing season is exactly that. Mr. GRANGER. Then, Mr. Doherty, I understand your testimony to be that the principal problems confronting the beet-sugar industry are the matter of pest and disease control, and some method of decreasing the man-hours of labor to produce sugar?

Mr. DOHERTY. Yes, Mr. Chairman. And putting first things first, as I see it, we think this labor situation is so critical that unless we solve it, these other questions are more or less immaterial. If we don't solve it, there just isn't going to be a crop. We put mechanization No. 1. We think that every effort should be put forth by every agency that is capable of doing it, and we are all of us, of course, devoting ourselves with a great deal of vigor to that problem.

Mr. GRANGER. The Spanish-American people that you were referring to are American citizens that have been doing that work?

Mr. DOHERTY. Yes; we have never recruited aliens. Our recruitment has always been in the United States, and I suppose it may be presumed that those people were legal residents. Certainly, in years gone by, many years gone by, I presume the border was not as closely patrolled as it has been in more recent years, and I presume-in fact, I know some people have been found and picked up by the Immigration Service that were ascertained to be illegal residents here and have been shipped back. But in the main they were American citizens, and there has never been an attempt, on our part at least, to recruit anybody from across the border, until the time that the present arrangements were made through the Department of Agriculture and the State Department to bring them in for the season and ship them back.

Mr. GRANGER. I think every member of this committee has been before the Appropriations Committee to secure additional appropriations to get people from the outside to work in American fields to harvest crops. I think the general consensus of opinion of the people concerned here is that we would like to develop the sugar-beet industry, and all our industries, to a point where American people can be counted on to do the work. It is a question in my mind whether it is a proper policy to import labor to do this kind of work, and I think it is important to solve the question of labor.

Mr. DOHERTY. Of course, we have more than that in mind, too, Mr. Chairman. We want to become as nearly competitive as possible with the competing areas off our shores, and this development in this direction is one of the most important things we can do to put ourselves in that competitive position. It is not very pleasant to have to have any type of artificial support.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Before we go to another subject I think this would be a good place to put into the record, or ask the witness, if this is not the situation: that we used to get all of this labor by our own effort, private efforts. Most of the men were residents of this country and a great many of them were citizens of this country, and certainly those who were not actual citizens were residents here. Contractors for the sugar-beet companies, in this case, would go to Mexico and bring over the additional help that was needed, and at the end of the season return them or see that they were returned, and the relations were very friendly and everything was very satisfactory. Now the Government has come into the picture. The Mexican Government has insisted that it be on the basis of international contract— and I am not objecting to that; I am merely saying that that is the case, and therefore it is now necessary for all of these negotiations to be carried on through the Government, or through an agency of the Government. If that continues, do you believe we will be able to go back to the matter of private arrangement for labor? Just as long as those requirements exist in Mexico, won't we have to have some sort of Federal contract and Federal arrangement?

Mr. DOHERTY. I think so. And I think that is nothing but a stopgap anyway. I don't think the success of an industry can depend upon the willingness or the ability of the two governments to work out arrangements year after year to bring people in to do this work.

Mr. PHILLIPS. It is a very unsatisfactory arrangement, because you are never quite certain what it is going to be.

Mr. DOHERTY. Furthermore, we have a feeling that there is never any race of people, no matter who they are, where they come from or where you get them, there is practically never but one generation of them that will do field work anyway. The Germans and Russians did. The first emigrant that came in here, Germans and Russians, did hand work under contract. The next generation were farmers themselves, and they are landowners and employers. I think you will find the same thing true of any other race of people. You just have about one generation that will do that kind of work, and that is all. That is not our way of doing. It has got to be done by machinery.

Mr. HILL. This thing gets into social as well as economic problems. Could you tell us what the average consumption per person of sugar has been at its highest peak in the United States?

Mr. DOHERTY. Our consumption figures, of course, are on distribution. There is always an invisible supply, and you may one year get more distributed into channels of consumption than is eaten, and next year that carry-over might be reduced, so our figures are all on the basis of distribution, which is approximate consumption. I think the top figure is 108 pounds per capita in the United States, but I believe the average over a period of recent years before rationing would be slightly under 100 pounds-call it 100 pounds. That is very close.

Mr. HILL. You think it is that high now?

Mr. DOHERTY. Not under rationing now. The present rate of distribution is set by OPA at 72 pounds.

Mr. HILL. And we have not reached that, have we?

Mr. DOHERTY. I doubt it. Of course, a good many of these coupons are never cashed, because there was no sugar in many areas.

Mr. HILL. I have had a considerable number of letters come over my desk from manufacturers of products that use sugar, and they have complained bitterly over the cut in the percentage of sugar that they have been allowed to use in the manufacture of their product, because of the program of the OPA in cutting down the use of sugar. For instance, bakers. I have had several letters from bakers in Colorado who have said: "Absolutely we are going to have to quit making the product that makes us money, because we cannot get the sugar." Do you know anything about that?

Mr. DOHERTY. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRANGER. Let us not get into that matter.

Mr. HILL. That is important on the price feature.

Mr. GRANGER. When we get off onto OPA, we are done.

Mr. HILL. Well, stay away from OPA. I want to know, if you can tell me, what percentage sugar represents in the increase in the cost of living to the consumer, as compared to other farm products. Recently I examined a table which absolutely shocked me in the increase-I am talking about the consumer now-the increase in the cost of living as to meat, as to flour, as to other farm products, and in this particular table I think there were 8 or 10, and then down at the very bottom was the increase in the price of sugar. I am talking about the consumer. There is a social question as well as an economic question here, Mr. Chairman, and this figure was tremendous in the increase in the cost of some foods to the housewife, but sugar was clear at the tail end. It had not increased hardly one cent.

Mr. DOHERTY. It has not increased at all, hardly.

Mr. HILL. What do you mean, "at all"?

Mr. DOHERTY. I think there was one adjustment, as I recall it, since January 1942. I think the single adjustment was an adjustment of 5 cents per hundred pounds. That is the only increase I recall in the ceiling price.

Mr. HILL. Do you know the price of sugar right now in the grocery stores in your own territory? This is important to us. Don't blame it on OPA now. I just want to find out the facts. What is the price of sugar per hundred pounds in the grocery stores in Colorado today? Mr. DOHERTY. I doubt if I can give the retail price on that.

Mr. HILL. Would this refresh your memory? I saw an ad in a grocery store that they were selling 10 pounds for 57 cents right in Greeley, Colo. Do you know anything about that?

Mr. CLEVENGER. It is 612 cents in Washington.

Mr. HILL. What I am trying to get at, Mr. Chairman, is if the cost to the housewife of sugar is to be kept at such a minimum price as that-and I am not finding fault with it-certainly then the increased cost of our agricultural industry must be absorbed through taxes or some other way, if the price of sugar is to be held at this low figure.

Mr. DOHERTY. The fact is, that sugar per unit is the cheapest food there is on the American market, and has been traditionally, and during the war period the price has not increased at all scarcely.

Mr. GRANGER. I think that is a fair statement and I think we all agree to it.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Would it be in order to ask what quality of sugar was found in Java?

Mr. DOHERTY. Mr. Phillips, there is very little known of that yet. Nothing that I have been able to get hold of has come in on it, except the first report, which was not made by experts at all. It is known that part of it was in bags and part of it was not in bags, but the bags themselves had deteriorated, and whatever was in the bags would have to be repacked. It is also known that the sugar was not produced during the current season nor the past season, and it is presumed to be 2 or 3 or more years old. The sugar people would raise a question for investigation as to what extent raw sugar stored in humid, tropical lands would be available for refining for market; that is, we would expect that there would be rather heavy losses in the handling of that sugar and putting it into refined form. We don't know about that at all. I think there is even some doubt of the quantity of it, but it is quite probable that there will be some of that sugar get to the refiners and get on the American market at some time.

Mr. GRANGER. I understand the question is how long a time might it be before it would be available?

Mr. DOHERTY. I have heard from some of the sugar people and some of the bureaus here in Washington and New York that they considered it rather doubtful if we would see any of it at the very earliest before the first of February, probably later.

Mr. GRANGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Doherty.

Dr. BRANDES. I wonder if you would clarify one statement that I am not sure that I understood, as to what you said in response to a question by Mr. Clevenger about the black root disease. Did I understand you to say that if it were not curbed, this whole territory where it is prevalent, the sugar beet is on the way out?

FURTHER STATEMENT OF E. W. BRANDES

Mr. BRANDES. We have a feeling that because of the evidence of progressive severity of the disease, it will be a deciding factor in whether that whole area where it is prevalent now can survive as a sugar-producing area.

Mr. GRANGER. What program have you got to further study that disease and control it, if any?

Mr. BRANDES. It has received a certain amount of attention, to the extent of our ability to give it attention, and certain facts have been discovered which have a bearing on the control of the disease. One is that by ordinary field sanitation, attention to good cultural methods and drainage, the effect of the disease is somewhat minimized. Also, by attention to the rotation or succession crops, the disease may be either increased in severity or decreased. By certain direct treatments of the seed it can be alleviated to some extent. But we have finally reached the conclusion that there can be only one completely satisfactory solution of the problem, and that is through a program of breeding resistance into the beet plant, and we have some evidence to support the hope of solving the problem in that way.

Mr. GRANGER. Thank you, sir. Now we will be glad to hear from Dr. McCall.

STATEMENT OF DR. M. A. McCALL, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Dr. MCCALL. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, Chairman Granger has asked me to briefly summarize the program of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering in relation to the whole sugar-producing problem in the United States.

Mr. GRANGER. Pardon me, Doctor, will you state your full name and title for the record?

Dr. McCALL. M. A. McCall, Assistant Chief, Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering.

In order to give some idea of the importance and scope of this general problem, I would like briefly to give a few data regarding the industry. The sugarcane industry of the United States in the current year represents 270,000 acres, roughly, in Louisiana, and 30,000 acres in Florida. This acreage occupies a very fertile and rich area, and sugarcane is by all means the one crop best adapted to give a profitable return on this particular soil type.

The sugar-beet acreage in the United States this year, roughly, is 720,000 acres, a slight improvement over last year. This is in contrast, however, to the 900,000 to something over a million acres that normally were grown before the war period and during the early part of the war period. There has been a gradual decrease in this acreage, particularly in the eastern area covered by the states where the black root disease is prevalent.

It is quite evident that the specific reasons for growing the crop mentioned by the preceding witness, Mr. Doherty, make it particularly important why we should undertake to stabilize it and to make it profitable to the grower, because it fits particularly well in the situation and meets certain special conditions for which there is no other available crop equally valuable for these specific purposes.

The work of the Bureau of Plant Industry is concerned primarily with the problems of production. We realize the importance of the specific problems mentioned by Mr. Doherty, insofar as they effect the stability and permanency of the industry. These problems have varied from time to time, however, and in the past diseases such as curly top in the western sugar beet area and the mosaic disease in the sugarcane area have threatened to wipe out the industry, and it has been necessary for us to emphasize these particular problems. As a result, our program has, in very large part, been concerned with disease control and with the breeding of varieties resistant to these diseases. As a matter of fact, the existence of both a sugar beet industry in the West and a sugarcane industry in Louisiana and Florida is entirely based upon the success of the program which has been carried on in our Bureau. The success of this program is indicative of what can be expected from further research. We feel that we have made substantial progress in our breeding and improvement work, in the development of better methods for growing sugar beets, in the production of sugar beet seed in this country, and in allied problems, but we recognize the fact that there are other problems that require attention.

In addition to the improvement in the crop material itself there is every reason to give additional attention to the problem of fitting pro