NFO-204 (AV10706): Response to Rural Prosperity

well are farming full-time in a sense and yet they are allowed to continue farming only because they have another job or because their wife is working at the hospital or or some such situation into this the farm they're losing money on the farm but they want to ever have their children raised on the farm away from the city and they're actually willing to be farmers at a lost it so they can have their children raised in a good situation yes that's right the total income from off the farm jobs exceeds the on-farm job welcome to us farm report a public information program brought to you in the interest of agriculture rural business and the well-being of our nation by members of the national farmers organization in this area and others interested in having American agriculture receive cost of production plus a reasonable profit the American farmers and ranchers are building a brighter future for agriculture through the national farmers organization the organization that awoke America and represents the leadership of Agriculture today's topic is responsibility to rural prosperity and we're pleased to present Hugh Crane who farms at Good Thunder Minnesota you will moderate today's program and introduce today's guest and then there's the loss who do they sell to the corporate farmer either the corporate farm or to another neighbor who is already overcrowded in his work schedule and who by the way is not getting any return for his investment today we're visiting with on my immediate left father Halloran who is the chapel in that Newman Center in Mankato State College Mankato State College has an enrollment of about 12,500 students now and Mankato's in the heart of some of the best farmland in all of Minnesota in fact of all of the nation I remember for my geography that the land in this area was rich as that in the valley of the Nile father Halloran was born and raised on a farm in Minnesota and is now working with young students at Mankato State and we welcome his addition to this discussion also on my left Dr. Fred Brown who is an assistant professor of history at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota about 12 miles from Mankato they have a student enrollment there of about 1,750 students and Dr. Brown has traveled extensively in Europe and Japan to study politics and the economic life there he was born and raised in rural Nebraska and has a real interest in rural problems particularly the idea of urbania and its effect on the producers of farm products what is the connection thread between urbania urban and rural problems and farm problems well as I see it you that we are concerned with urban problems with great talked about it and recently we're finally getting around recognized in the urban problem rests upon the rural problem now if you've got to talk about rural problems you have to start with a farmer unfortunately but you do that he seems to be the rock bottom problem here and that so many of the young people who are going off to the cities and who then become problems of urban America people looking for an opportunity both black and white come from the farm or from those industries and businesses closely associated with the farm and it seems to me that if we're to develop a new lifestyle a style that is looking toward an America that combines the benefits of both world in urban America that helps to relieve the pressures off the city by developing new kinds of life on in the rural area it has to be done first by considering well who's already there what are their problems and can we save who's there before we talk about saving the millions from the city and helping them come out to a new life in connection to the city we better talk about the farmer who's in the worst state of any in the farm right now father you are dealing every day with the students at Mankato State through your Newman Center work who are rural people rural students what are they saying about the rural problems these days I think that they're of course at the college principally for one purpose to get an education but secondarily and maybe primarily the education will make it possible for them to earn a living in the future in one statement you get from time to time is that the farm isn't big enough for both dad and me and if I were to get married then certainly isn't large enough so there's no possibility am I going back to the farm and I can make more money elsewhere sometimes you get the comments along these lines well if I could afford to start farming I could afford to retire costs are so high everything I have to buy is way out of line as a result of this why should I invest in something that is so uncertain there's no future if I go into teaching I'm fairly well certain that I can make a living wage there is the National Education Association there's the Federation of Teachers they're organized and anything else of course that you go into too they're aware of the fact that they're going to be protected by some kind of an organization that is going to see to it that they make a living wage and they have no guarantee on the firemen the insecurity is is always a problem with it do you think that young people actually demand a guarantee of security or are they looking for a place of responsibility and they cannot find responsibilities in the rural areas I oppose that as a problem I think it's both you I think they want a responsibility but nowadays in our capitalistic society if you are going to be responsible you need a certain amount of money and you can't fulfill a responsibility today you can't reach a fulfilling responsibility to your family you can't fulfill your responsibilities to your to your church to the community literally if you pee if you can't to meet the payment at the bank which is a pretty basic responsibility then how can they even think in terms of responsibility to the entire community which is so important I think they all see that our whole economy depends on the farmer they'd like to share this responsibility I don't they question this but again there's the uncertainty how can you be responsible with without the wherewithal yes and responsibility were to suggest that we need involvement in all of the movements of the rural area and I've often thought about how can you get more people involved do they know that the involvement entails the responsibility that you just mentioned and how are we going to get involvement pointed towards the direction of getting the income that you've just mentioned how are we going to raise prices we an NFO think we've got the answer Fred and we've worked long and hard on and you've watched with some interest now what would you suggest in this relationship well it seems to me Hugh that everybody organizes we've talked as many times but you know the teachers are organized and we know that even baseball players now are organized and it seems to me that the farmer has to see the trend that that he can't bargain individually he's going to have to get together and his object has to be first-place prices now from my point of view I know as a consumer that probably if he's successful I'm going to have to pay a little more but the alternative to me is more disastrous than than if he wins because if he wins I know that he will stay in the community he'll spend his profits which he is organized to get he'll spend those profits in my hometown and he'll send his kids to the college to which I teach but if he has to give up his farm and move out and particularly if corporate farms come in then I know that the profits again which I have to pay through my consumption are not going to come back to my hometown they're not going to come back to the college which I teach they are going to go off to Wall Street or to the banks of the great cities and they're not going to come to me in any way shape or form and to me therefore I say organize get your price if that cost me as a consumer a little more fine and then I'll welcome you across the street in Community Affairs I'll teach your children and it'll make a more lively community for me and that'll be worth it to me as a consumer that's a good point you know if the corporate farmer does take over our small farms these corporate farmers will get organized and the prices that are being demanded day by the small farmer are going to be paid and much better to keep the small farmer on the farm right I don't use the word small farm in a derogatory way by any means a rather complimentary phrase but sooner or later the farm prices are going to be reached and it's going to be up to the community literally to see to it that we get these prices to the farmers who live on the farm now or later on to corporations who are going to be able to control prices right across the board let's consider a minute this price increase I and all the other farmers in the United States produce enough food for myself and my family in an addition enough food for 42 other people this is the abundance of our farm production these days now if each of those 42 including father Yuen fat were to pay 10 cents per day that would mean four dollars and 20 cents per day that I'd be getting if it would get to the farm level where we as family farm operators could have this money I would have four dollars and 20 cents more at ten cents per day per consumer to add to my so-called profits which at this point are not there but that would make me a profit for the year just as ten cents per day so it's not a great amount of money we're talking about we're talking about a relatively small amount of money then there's another set of figures as long as I'm on the subject that I'd like to call to your attention I have been looking through some of the United States Department of Agriculture bulletins that I've came up across some rather interesting figures the one particularly in this bulletin which is the farm income estimate state by state and nationally as well if it it is f is supplement 211 if you would want to write to the United States Department Culture for this bulletin and on one of the pages there I saw these figures the cash receipts from Farm marketing's for an example in 1952 just 15 years ago amounted after you take farm production expenses from it to nine billion eight hundred ninety eight million dollars in 1967 cash receipts from Farm marketing's less farm production expenses amount to only seven billion nine hundred and sixty eight millions of dollars so in 15 years we've lost 1 billion nine hundred and thirty million dollars because of our inability to ask for a fair price this has in effect done this it is said that I have to go to the market this day and I have to ask them please won't you take all the farm production that I have these truckloads of grain this truckloads of livestock the semis of farm production whatever nature fruits vegetables peanuts nuts cotton tobacco or whatever and I say won't you please mister processor or mr. buyer of farm products won't you please take this abundance of farm production form from me for six hundred and fifty dollars less than you paid my dad for it I am in reality as all the other farmers are farming the land that dad used to fire and in addition to my own land in addition to also to some of my neighbor's land and I am producing this great abundance and I'm going to the market in place and play saying please won't you give me six hundred and fifty dollars less than I got for fifteen years ago now this is the problem of farm pricing this is the problem that NFO particularly is in its throes of development in trying to find farmers who will agree in principle with the idea of collective bargaining for agriculture and I think that sooner or later that every man who is raising farm production will recognize the value of collective bargaining and want to help to get a better price for his agricultural products now Fred we've talked about this pricing thing does it bring to you your mind the other problems of rural America that have and will be affected by fair price cultural very definitely who I'm thinking about what happens in a talent when you don't get what you deserve when do you the farmer don't be aren't able to make a living what it's going to do then in terms of pumping money into that town what it's going to do in terms of the tax base of that town and that you know that's a great concern when you start talking about your school system when you talk about your community hospital you realize that rural schools are worse off than urban suburban schools that the health facilities are worse for community hospitals how do you keep a doctor in there for example when you don't have that money coming in from the farm community and in thinking terms of recreation we talk about soil conservation we talk about what the farmer ought to do to contribute to recreation and then you say well the farmer ought to give us some of that forest over there he ought to give us some land how can he he needs it now if you give him an income maybe you can talk Turkey with him about giving a little to the county or to the city and it seems to me above all to that we lose those good young people they go off to the city and then we don't get their brains we don't get their beauty we don't get any of the resource there that we have created we train them we educate them we raise them and send them off to live someplace else and we don't get that benefit and it that leads me to one other point you don't want talked on this too much because there are lots of things we must cover but that is that business of the value that we talk about as a traditional rural value now I think that one can make too much of this but there is something about seeing the man stand up on his land the man I don't want to have to say to my children I guess this is a nutshell you I don't want to say to my grandchildren once upon a time there was a man called a farmer and he lived just outside of town here but of course he's gone now I don't want to say that you I want to talk about small towns which can grow which come alive but because it represents a total community I don't want a community which is lost one of its most important segments I always think of the emphasis that is placed on the term family farm and we're hear much discussion about that these days what size of the family farm ought to be who ought to be in family farm operation does that include just the man who owns the farmer did not include his family as kids who all does the family farm mean and I would like to pose this question to you father what do you think the term family farm implies I think first of all the term family is the important concept there you're talking about a situation of the father and the mother and the children and immediately we have to be concerned about the welfare of this family which means an adequate income to support the family a living wage and whether a man is single or married is still based on the concept that he has a family that one day at least he will have a family so right away we're saying their family is that which is the center of our society the basis of our society and of course there's no place better for the family to be at least I'm convinced of this than to be raised on the farm the family farm then it should be such that it would support the entire family I think at least in this area it's very obvious that the farmer will work he works very diligently every moment he has for the farm his wife is likely to be working also on the farm and the children when they're home from school are working and the odds are even that if they're going to stay on the farm today they almost have to have a job in the city as well I find at the college the numerous parents will come to me and will say that well we earn so much in the city carrying the dinner pail and their dinner bucket in the rest and then we go home to the firemen work twice as hard and we come out even we lose what we made in the city now this is certainly not a family farm situation that's not even a way of living anymore it's now it's certainly not a way of making a living it's family farm living without income isn't right getting by switches in an impossible situation yes and if we had that income to prosper the firearms there can be no question and general agreement that this is also going to prosper the small towns and large towns in the cities the metropolitan centers as well what we fail to recognize is that whose responsibility is it to maintain to get to price ourselves into this prosperous condition I maintain that it's my responsibility I don't believe that the government owes it to me to provide me with a living for my endeavors I believe that I have to be honest enough with myself to demand a fair day's wages for a fair day's work and I think that in our capitalistic system where profits generate our taxes in the whole country that I also all the responsibility to everyone in the nation to generate enough profit to become a useful tool of our government a useful tool in our nation but now how are we going to get this message to those rugged individualists hsihu perhaps because of some background situation because of some extra-special type of farm inheritance perhaps that they've had how we're going to involve them where are we going to be able to tell them a lot no you need to help us you need to become your brother's keepers how can we tell them that I'm curious you whether whether farmers being as busy as they are as as concerned as they are we're just getting through the labors that they must go through whether they really know always what their income is what the depreciation is if they can follow this careful enough when you talk in terms of the national budget when you talk in terms of price increases I know that for me who lives off a simple salary it's difficult enough and I don't have a great deal of outside investments if I had them I know it'd be much more difficult it seems to me that one thing the NFO can do is clearly point out time and time again that there is a real need here to understand your financial status whether you're living off your depreciation or whether you're living off the inflation of the land I think that that's one one definite thing that they have to get straight first or am i making money or aren't I and then if they find out they're not and I daresay they probably will then they must look to organize themselves yes and organizing of course is our theme we think that we must bargain together so we can sell together and so we can profit together and father what do you think about the annual programs as you visualize them today as you've worked with them and as you I think you that just from the last couple of weeks I hadn't experienced that pretty well summarizes and my thoughts on this the whole program of withholding let's face it our our system is based on supply and demand a great deal in it if you can take care of 42 other people by your work well yeah your greeneries just aren't big enough to hold that you you have to get rid of it I realize that and the pigs get so large and you have to get rid of them or you're losing money by eating them and the price goes down as they reach a certain weight but as you know we've had a lot of snow in Minnesota in the last two months and it got bad enough so that God saw to it that the farmers withholding his crop you couldn't get trucks to the to the barn you couldn't get trucks to the pens and the prices went up and I think if the farmer could take a lesson from God and say well God you have sent it's enough snow here in Minnesota we've received much better price for hogs than we had ever expected now let us sell them and sure enough the the prices will go down is we've already seen the snow has broken somewhat and the first day that the plows were getting to to the barns things dropped to dollar seventy five hundred well I think if we can keep up with the guide if you will on this I think would be in good shape if we can cooperate with one another and with God in the efforts that are going to be essential for us to maintain or at least get started on maintaining a decent level of prosperity for farmers and all the rest of world America and the nation as well then we will have served a useful purpose well this is 1969 very less then a away from turning into another decade the 1960s have been bleak years for rural people at a time when technological advances new innovations and new methods have made it possible for the American farmer to raise more food for more people than any other family in the world the buying comes in our inability to generate price increases if we are to generate a pricing formula sufficient to pull agriculture out of the stagnated pool of insufficient income if we're going to mean ready and able to feed the 10 million hungry in the United States and to provide sustenance for the starving in other countries if we're going to fulfill our god-given mission on earth to truly become our brothers keepers if we're going to again become a living part of this great nation if we're going to accept a responsibility to prosperity we must continue organizing so we can bargain from a position of strength we as individual farmers really but two choices number one we can continue just as we are the victims of a pricing system which which has no consideration or no responsibility for our once and our needs or two we can join a strong farm bargaining organization put our production together so we can bargain together and sell together so we as a group can negotiate our needs and our once into terms of dollars this is what the national farm organization is all about the NFO is a do-it-yourself kit where our individual responsibility is enlarged to include our neighbors responsibility clear across this nation the formula for success is simple total production times an adequate price equals rural prosperity if you feel that the NFO program is right for you and if you're ready to participate in rural prosperity right to an Apple Corning Iowa and tell them that you're ready to get a fair farm price for your farm production all we need is you and as soon as you have made up your mind that you want rural prosperity we can have rural prosperity thank you gentlemen so very much for being with us on this panel today father Hillary my honor favorites it's been a real pleasure to discuss these problems with you and I think it's been great to have you here we want miss Davis adolphus well keep participating in these rural programs as much as they have in the past and Father your work at Newman Center is fantastic there's so many young people who I talked with that know you would know you well and who will seek your advice and follow and I'm sure thankful we have a man of your stature and your bearing here in the main character mmunity read I hope that we are finally going to get community and farm together you to organize both for their own interests which I think are common interests that the farmer will organize to keep alive and the communities will organize to keep alive that will be there when America begins to turn to us when the cities are truly too crowded and too polluted etc will be there clean organized ready to go and ready to make a profit and isn't an amazing thing that maybe just a few years ago we would have been almost afraid to talk about farm prices it seemed like it was almost taboo that the polite thing was that was being said was we have to get more efficient we have to get larger and bigger we have to do all these fine things that the universities and the colleges and the farm people in the county agents said were necessary to affect an abundance well we did that we broke the barrier of 200 bushel corn and we booked the barrier behind a bushel beans and incidentally you'd be interested in this the cost of the increased production means that I am going to have to pay if I live up to what my fellow farmers are doing eight dollars and 35 cents for this extra super-efficient see this extra super effort to raise our yields for every four dollars 96 cents that I'll get back these figures are also borne out in this bulletin that I showed you earlier in the program so I'm putting out eight dollars and thirty-five cents for each approximately five dollars I'll get back well you know that's not very good businessman I'm not gonna you know it's true you and Fred is making the same point here I don't think the average person in urban America really understands the farm problem as much as we've talked about it we haven't talked enough many of them recall the days right during the Second World War and right after when the farmer did do pretty well he really did and I don't think any farmer would deny that and they just go back to that well I remember when and we have to bring people up to date that's all as you did with your figures there on the last 15 years we hear so much generally about the word involvement and this is what the NFO was trying to do I'm trying to help my neighbor I'm trying to get my neighbor to help me and I'm trying to involve you man and your vast knowledge and your learning and your students in the thing that we know is right we know it's right because it has to be right that's the only solution is on my estimation and in my opinion to increase prices of farm production to take care of the many many problems sociologically and economically in the rural areas the sooner we get on with that problem and the sooner we recognize that we do have the muscle we do have the product that we can get it we will have fine prosperity members of the National Farmers Organization invite you to tune in again next week at the same time for more facts on Agriculture and Rural America which is the gear we that our economy that produces the majority of our nation's new wealth the farm income pattern sets the nation's prosperity and the national farmers organization represents new thinking in a new generation of agricultural producers a brighter day for American agriculture