NFO-226 (AV10739): US Farm Report: Agricultural America - Future

[music] like sunrise hope dawns every morning in the hearts of men for farm people that hope lies in the fields and their crops it is the hope that nature will be bounteous and that the everlasting cycle of plowing and planting tilling and cropping and caring will be blessed by fine harvests it is the hope that greeneries and larders will be filled with the fruits of the earth and the goodness of the land on some modern farms like this one that early morning hope may indeed come to pass it may live and flourish but in far too many rural communities the hope for a bounteous farm life is tragically stillborn and no Midwife can give it breath or strength in far too many agricultural communities there is now death where there once was life decay where there once was growth blight where there once was held and silence where there once was the sound of vitality what juices have not dried are rapidly drying and the land of milk and honey has been darkened by the shadow of low farm prices for in spite of farmers tremendous investment in land and equipment in spite of their ever-increasing efficiency farmers need a fair share price for their products a price that lets them share equally with other segments of our economy with the manufacturer the construction worker the independent businessman or without this fair share price farm families will continue to leave their farms at the rate of 2,500 a week the best talents of America's farm youth will continue to be siphoned off into urban industrial areas and the sound of the auctioneers gavel will continue to punctuate the quiet of rural America family farms will decay and so will the small agricultural communities that depend upon them the iron will rust the wood will rot and the souls of the men charged with providing for the wants of mankind will shrink and shrivel the story of the farm problem in America can be told in pictures but they are not pleasant pictures to see they speak to us of the evil times that family farming has fallen upon throughout the land and since wealth comes from the land the farm problem needs the immediate attention can hope dawn again for farm families NFO thinks so listen and so we look at the ugliness and blight attacking literally hundreds of smaller farming communities across the land as the exodus from the farm continues welcome to us farm report last week on our show we were concerned with the past and the present of American agriculture this week a look into the crystal ball a look into the future of American agriculture my guests again this week a repeat performance for these two fine gentlemen are on my left mr. Vince Rossiter mr. Rossiter is president of the Bank of Hartington in Hartington Nebraska a town located in the northeast corner of that state population around 1600 mr. Rossiter is the author of numerous articles on the subject of the economy of rural America he has been published numerous times nationally by the independent Bankers Association and organization of which he is a member on my right is my other guest Dr. E.W. Mueller Dr. Mueller grew up on a farm in Northern Iowa after graduation from the seminary he served as a pastor of a small rural church for about 12 years right after World War 2 Dr. Mueller was appointed secretary of his church's Town & Country work a job he held for some twenty four years he is now serving in South Dakota as director for community organization and area development at Sioux Falls Dr. Mueller is one of the most outstanding rural church leaders in the nation once again ladies and gentlemen this week we have on my right a gentleman working with the spiritual and social values in rural America and on my left a gentleman working with the hard material side of the farm program a preacher and a banker I almost make you sound like the villain then certainly and I certainly don't mean to it all but it's the truth in the banking business you do work with the hard cold facts don't you correct I think before Dr. and Vince we get into the future this week it might be well in as much as some of our viewers this week perhaps weren't watching us last to sort of review and talk for a moment about the status quo of American agriculture so I would like for you events if you will to comment on the status quo of Agriculture from the economic standpoint and upon completion of your comments we'll ask you doctor to comment about it from the standpoint of the spiritual or the sociological okay okay all right Vince what about the status quo economically well economically bill agriculture has been stagnant since 1951 that's a long time for an important sector of the American economy to stand still now in the concept of the economics that we're teaching and using in the United States today this is not all bad actually the farm economy has never earned as much a net income the years from 1951 to date as it earned in 1949 or it earned in the average of 1947 to 49 mm-hmm now it's an important part of the American economy and it is a large sector of the American economy yes but it has been used in recent years to balance the rise in other sectors of the economy because it's largely unorganized and incapable of pricing its production such as the manufacturing industries do as a consequence of this it has contributed substantially the economic factors to the the decay of the rural community and there seems that you have preceded this film it's something that I can't be optimistic about in the future because in my opinion before this changes the power structure of the United States starting at the presidential level must completely change their economic point of view it must recognize that the farm economy must have the same economic viability an increase in prices and profits that all other sectors of the economy have and then failing to do this the rural economy neither supports itself or does it support the other areas of the economy that depend on it as a market for goods and services that we use in our various businesses and particularly in farming now there's nothing at the present time being done to my knowledge to change this philosophy and the basic philosophy is very simple that the agricultural economy must make a contribution to the total economy annually through relatively cheaper raw materials which comprise the basic consider elements for our food shoes clothing beverages tobacco which consumes a substantial part of the earned income of the people United States now the theory is a core is that only 5% of the people suffer because this is the farm population today and 95% of the people benefit but it ignores the fact that the farm economy is the rural industry it's important to the rural community their rural small town and the rural cities such as Sioux City and Omaha and even Chicago because the money that is generated on the farm is the source of subs business in the communities and in the service centers in the large cities without a generation of adequate income at the farm level which must be generated by the farmer himself this income cannot flow to the rural community and then beyond that into the metropolitan areas into the manufacturing areas now this is a this is comparable to the wages the wage any payments that are earned from industrial development now we're suggesting in rural America that the that the solution to our declining rural economy which is really a declining price level and profit level more than anything else that we substitute to manufacturing enterprises which is a fine I have no fight with this idea but we cannot substitute anything for a prosperous farm economy we must have in the rural economy whether we have three million farmers as we have today or a hundred thousand farmers we must generate a certain given proportion of the total national income of the United States and failing to do this we do not have they new wealth which will perpetuate the other areas of the economy and make it possible to trade effectively between the various areas now what I'm saying is that when they product of an hour of labor in agriculture will trade to the product of an hour of Labor and Industry we have equity of trade and we can have approximate full employment we can have approximate full consumption no troublesome surpluses and we can have prosperity in agriculture as well as in the other sectors of the economy now the rural areas had it earned during this period 1951 through the present period the same average income relatively as was earned in other sectors of the economy would have had twice as much money in the banks in the state desert in the nation as it has today and as a consequence of this the banks would have advocate built leave loaning twice as much money obviously also we would have had to contribute twice as much capital yeah but the money the bulk of it you understand would belong to the people and when people have twice as much money they have a tendency to do spend or invest twice as much now this to me is the thing that we must have some restoration of as the economic basis for a viable rural America before we can really accomplish the things that were ambitious to accomplish in restoring agricultural America and rural America now the thing I think bill that is important here is the fact that while we want a viable and and a growing and a renewal of their agricultural economy and while we probably have the people remaining the hard core who hasn't moved out yet or who have enough business capital to remain for a while unless we can support any kind of economic advancement that we make after we have made it it will die on the vine just as the advancements of the past and have died on the vine now you can see in most rural communities were the principal small community in the area has leached away the businesspeople of the other smaller communities outside of it and now these communities that had the benefits of the people from these smaller communities are losing their people to the next larger communities as this process of leeching the business people out of these small communities persists and continues now I agree that there can be a way there is a way I'm sure of reversing this situation and of bringing to rural America the people who are looking for quality living an opportunity I think that this has begun in a small way as the people get tired of the problems in the city and the things that are going on there that we are so fully aware of back the matter is you've had an example or two in your town right of this returning to the smaller community every month we have and these people as they come back are the graduates from the University who have gone into the Air Corps or gone into as of the united states and the metropolitan areas particularly who have for one reason or another through retirement or some of the reason decided to come back most of the cases it's because they don't like what they have run into in the metropolitan area isn't because they want to continue or finish bringing up their families in this rural surrounding that they themselves we're born and reared in and as a consequence of this we are getting some renewal of ideas people who are not satisfied with the status quo as you put it and who are making suggestions but our principal industry and we have to remember this as the agricultural industry we in my opinion do not need other types of manufacturing industry unless it's a processing industry where we process our own raw materials and before we ship them out but as far as bringing some of the type of manufacturing industry and where we have to bring the raw materials in and then ship them out I don't believe we need this if we have an honest-to-goodness program at every level of government and business to see that the agricultural economy has a fair share of the income of the total economy now some economists will call this a redistribution of the wealth I call it reflation of farm prices reflation because they have been depleted deliberately in my opinion and I think that record proves this for the purpose of following this economic model of reducing farm prices a little bit every year so that other people and the other areas of the economy will have more real income with which to buy other goods and services now this is terribly detrimental to the rural economy it's deadening into the future of rural America and I would say at the moment I'm extremely pessimistic about a turnaround unless we have some real talent come into the arena and helped us a great deal do you think that this talent has to come into the arena to use your phrase at the level of government federal government Vince yes I think some part of it has to be federal government hopefully not but the federal government has the means of controlling farm prices and farming is a unique industry and the grain we produce the wheat the corn the Milo we have to produce a 365 day supply and put it in our grain reason cribs at harvest time in order to feed society the succeeding year so as a consequence we have here a real serious handicap in agriculture because we've only got one day's available demand it's my opinion bill that unless some organization comes forward to enforce the needs of rural America upon the government that the government isn't going to be the strongest force involved in in the renewal of rural America or and the restoration of the farm income situation and I think perhaps that this is where the national farmers organization fits into the picture and it needs plenty of help from rural businesspeople in others in order to force the government to see this point of view and not use the agricultural economy for the benefit of the other sectors but use it to support the other sectors do you remember Dr. Mueller I certainly did Hi doctor do remember us yeah I've been listening to you we're gonna say we've sort of ignored you and certainly haven't intended to I'd like for you now if you will doctor to comment on the status quo of the American agricultural community sociologically and then go ahead and look into your crystal ball and tell us what you think it lies ahead a bill today we hear a good deal about the urban crisis and that would say the urban crisis is very real and we need to take that seriously but to the same degree there is a rural crisis and this rural crisis has existed a long time and exists in many areas it's a very complex thing it does not just it's an economic crisis and Vince has indicated in the sense it's a crisis of contradiction here we are a people the best fed people in the world and yet we have so many farmers who are not receiving more than 2,500 year mm-hmm and we just haven't been able to lick this economic problem has vince has been discussing but it's also in the area of education in this sense that we produce some of the best young people but then we can't afford them and we send them off this leadership off it's a crisis of health ordinarily I think in terms you know that that do we have less accidents in the country but we have more accidents per capita in the rural areas and we have the urban areas but we have less doctors less pharmacist and less nurses and the like and so you see it's a crisis of contradiction but beside this it's a crisis of apathy if people are really becoming discouraged in the sense that they have lost if heal they have lost to control of their own destiny they know something is happening to them that they know that things are changing their communities are changing the economy isn't there and they just feel that this is happening look to them and they don't have really any control over it, it comes back to giving them the moral encouragement that there is an answer and I think this has been suggested the answer lies in people gonna get a little bit later and but it's tied with this I like to also say it's a crisis of what I call adult irresponsible behavior now this is the me illustrate this you see sometimes when a certain group tries to improve a certain thing than other groups tend to undercut them see and it says they're sitting idly by and let him try it they deliberately esteemed seem to sabotage the common good and now the same thing is here if a processing plant wants to come into a small community and which I think we need more of to process more of the agricultural products near home then too often local citizens act irresponsible in the sense they don't want them to come in because it may rage the wage scale and and then there's a lack of a it's aggravated this crisis aggravated by a lack of integrity that's very difficult to get the farm story you didn't if anybody is telling an untruth but no one is retelling the whole truth now we have see this tremendous adjustment that is taking place and the number of people are still gonna be leaving rural America and we hear the economic aspect of it but we don't really the community problem because after all the basis of economy is not just to provide food and fiber for the other sectors but the base of an income it's also to provide the basis of a quality living community and this needs a lot of thought then there is this crisis of communication of rural America is organized vertically and that there is communication from the small village to the next higher village the county seat to the state of the nation but there is very little communication that I call horizontal communication with the towns on the same geographical area within a radius of 50 miles well the same thing in common that they talk with each other they tend to really compete with each other and this all adds to the confusion the apathy and the total the crisis and it comes back to a really a matter of inadequate values economist has point out in a member you probably know him Vince Brewster who passed away a number of years ago and he emphasized that the agriculture policy determined by three basic creed the one is a democratic creed which briefly stated is this that no one is so wide that he can tell me what to do and the farmer believes it hope you believe this and it's good then there is the private enterprise creed that no one is going to interfere in my business not my neighbor not my farm organization of my government and then there's a proficiency creed that he has status among his peers if he can produce more bushels per acre than his neighbor can and there he's caught in these values and the more he produces the less he gets but I find lacking here is not that these creeds are wrong but there are there something lacking and that is I would like to call the creed of fulfillment and that is that the strong ought to help the weak we talked about last week yes and that the more manager ability God gives me or give someone else the greater my responsibility to help the people of less manager ability to also find fulfillment it ought not to be my role to use my superior trainee or education or skills to take advantage of those with less opportunity so you see this is a really a complex crisis yet I would say I see a ray of hope today because I think there's something happening on the on the scene we are we're finding new leaders and we're finding people really beginning to organize themselves and I encourage different types of farm organizations if they will really stand for some principles and stick with what they bleed so that they will balance their self-interest and their group interest but I like to sort of put into focus at this particular point if we have time is what I see emerging and that I would like to scribe as the area community the larger community and that is the same thing that we had years ago but it's a difference on a different scale and we might put it this way we need a new type of neighborliness see we had neighborliness us years ago in the mangas in the small neighborhood the barn burned down the neighbors got together I had to run and and they help each other and or it wasn't a thrashing ring or it wasn't a man was ill this is still being done but it existed between people closely knit people often ethnic group yes but now the same spirit of neighborliness that existed between people that were close to each other needs to exist between the different towns that make up an area community and a town of at associate thousand ought to ask you tell what kind of a neighbor are we to our neighboring town are we a helpful neighbor or do we see our neighboring town as a competing force I'm not against competition but it also has to be of the type that help each other and so I think what's on the horizon can you see this when you begin to examine the behavior patterns of people there can be shopping patterns there commuting patterns and people in the in the non-metropolitan out areas live in many different types of communities first here maybe you won that person that has a convenient shopping center is gonna be 500 and he has a partial shopping center perhaps a thousand a complete shopping center perhaps the county seat town then he has his wholesale retail shopping centers and then we have our athletic center which for this area plays the twins they don't know which is that's right or not but I'm trying to say is that we reside in a certain spot but we really live in the area and we have interaction with with this whole area and now this firstly we have documented this I know of a certain town that maybe 70,000 if you take the larger trade area this would bring it the population up to about 250,000 this really in my amount of mine is a scattered city you just remove the city limits and begin to have people think together I'm not gonna do this because we don't want a necessary phase out the small town or get a mass city but we want to find a way how these different units can be strengthened and how they can improve the quality of life and business in their little community but in relationship to the area and we're really reaching for is a new model type of living and this is what we're looking at in a Sioux Falls area in which really the Sioux Falls is an area of 80,000 and if we include the surrounding counties that sort of polarize around the city we come up with a scattered city about 258,000 so this brings together enough resources both human and economic that it is within our reach to have the quality of life second to none and it is our hope that this will make possible they have the best of the big city the best the medium-sized city the best of the small town and the best of open country I by the point that Vince made that we need a sound farm economy but I think you in addition that we will also be needing an additional source of income and this could come I would say from the development of industry in the larger area community particularly a type of industry that would be processing the agricultural products the products that are produced in the rural areas ought to be processed near the place of production but addition to the sound economy there's other ingredient that I want to emphasize very briefly and I think in the last analysis whether rural America will come out of this and there be a renewal and there will be quality living in the countryside will depend upon the spirit of the people that are now living there it will call for a type of people well ready to accept responsibility who are willing to work together their neighbors we're forward-looking have a positive attitude and are not afraid of the word planning don't think in terms of planning together their own business their own affairs but also on a larger community basis this I think would make it possible for us to come up with a new model type of community in a non-metropolitan areas sitting between a preacher and a banker isn't so bad after all Thank You Vince I'll be by for a loan and Dr. you can put in a good word with your man for me if you will I will our guests today discussing the future of American agriculture and they were my guests last week discussing the past and present of American agriculture on my left mr. Vince Rossiter Vince is the president of the Bank of Hartington in Hartington Nebraska on my right is Dr. E. W. Muller one of America's outstanding rural clergymen until next week at the same time on us farm report so long everybody [music]