NFO-98 (AV10504): Urban and Suburban

good afternoon friends and welcome to urban and good afternoon friends and welcome to urban and suburban we're going to have a very fine program today because we're going to get right down to to some of the big basic problems that are confronting agriculture in the United States today and we have a very fine gentleman who has flown all the way in here from Corning Iowa to be with us today he is the national president of the national farmers organization mr. Oren Lee Staley welcome mr. Staley how are you nice to have you here now you you talked about two fellows two old farm boys flying around we were flying your plane didn't get in here till there well I came from Moline Illinois this morning and I got in here just about 11:45 so you had to come from the airport out here and boy we just made it but we certainly are proud to have you here with us today to be here because that the National Farmers Organization is rather new in comparison to some of the the other the Farm Bureau and the Grange and so on your organization is very new but before we start talking about the organization I want to find out something about you I had been in Iowa lived in Iowa and I know that's like one of the greatest farming areas in the whole wide world tell us a little bit about yourself well I really live in Northwest Missouri our farms in northwest Missouri at 400 acres a diversified farmer, we're just proud that we're farmers I have a wife three children so that's that tells the story served in the Navy during World War two in the college Northwest Missouri State and still go home and anytime I get a little farm or you know so you're still digging right well that's fine now we have the background on mr. Staley the NFO now I know that the you city folks have read many times in the papers about NFO and some of the activities that they have been that active in during the past two or three years and I know there's been a lot of misunderstanding among city people about your organization I know there's been a lot of misunderstanding among farmers about is correct and I thought that this would be a wonderful go to the horse's mouth so to speak and find out so I have some questions here to ask you mr. Staley and that some of them I'm going to meet I may let you have it all right now let's start right off NFO what is in NFO well NFO is an organization of farmers made up of farmers and run by farmers because only farmers and producers can be members of the organization therefore it's a true farm organization our purposes and goals are collective bargaining for the American farmer we believe that basically have believed and when we started talking about collective bargaining just about eight years ago now no one was talking about collective bargaining and agriculture very few thought we had any chance but as we begin to talk about the basic principles in the need of collective bargaining in American agriculture I guess we might say we were ahead of our time for a while but now almost everyone recognizes that farmers need bargaining power farmers well numerically by a considerable number of farmers over a wide area buyers are few and more powerful stronger and so we're living in a different time and changing conditions where every other segment of the economy is organized except the American farmers in the past they've gone to the marketplace and said what will you give me we're organizing for the purpose of acting his business man putting a price on our products to compete in an organized economy now let me ask you this that we've had so-called coops for many years that have that are supposed to be helping the farmer now what is the difference between your organization the national farmers organization and the so called co-op organizations well I think in principle somewhat the same but here's the the basic difference first we have organized not to go into business our bylaws prohibit us from going into business now this doesn't mean we're critical of the cooperatives that have been in the business venture so they perform valuable services for the farmers in their community but we're living in a different time and the co-operative structure cannot meet the pricing problems because they are organized in one given area and then sometimes two or three states but you cannot deal with volume buyers that are over the entire nation that are buying in every agricultural state with just a group in one area you have to compete industry-wide and a more important point undoubtedly to be considered is the fact that you must work on all of the commodities if you're going to really be effective so if you're going to have effective bargaining in American agriculture you have to work on all commodities raised therefore the prices and a general balance or you'll ruin the bargaining power that you gained through this and you bring it up to stabilize prices through contracts this is a basic difference that's it now a couple of years ago NFO came into prominence during their holding action now exactly what did they expect the game and what did you actually accomplish well of course this is where there's more misunderstanding about NFO than any other part of our program people did not understand that the purpose of a holding action was to test the farmers reaction support and of course to prove our bargaining power to the fires now the buyers had refused to deal with NFO aspect as an organization of farmers to deal with NFO members as a group so consequently what they in refusing to meet and deal with the NFO members as a group it men we had to first get recognition and we had to prove to the processors that we had enough volume of production brought together over a large enough area but they could not operate their plants in an efficient manner unless they accepted this production NFO members a society with the gold of contracts that would stabilize farmers prices at fair levels take care of any surpluses that might develop or exist and in other words bargained for a fair equitable price but get stability in agriculture alrighty now let me ask you this question if NFO gets the price that they're asking for now how will this affect the prices in the store that's what a mama when she goes to the store that's what she wants to know how is this going to affect the the types of - food keeps going up as it is well I think that this is a real critical question that's being discussed in the American household today and I think it's one that we need to examine closely first I'd like to say and I forgot to mention that we were successful in the 64 holding action processors are now dealing with NFO members as such and we've been able to raise the NFO has as a group we've been able to raise the general price level on many commodities and I know we'll get into the details on that before the program's over but what happens is as far as the consumer is concerned they fail to recognize that food is still the best buy in America 1 hours wages are buy more food than ever before in the history of our country now this may sound a little thorn or a little unreasonable to a housewife that's looked at what they paid for the groceries last week or or today that they're buying but they have to go back and look at what has happened to the price of a new automobile the doctor bill or anything else they buy let's do the clothes and they have to recognize that the reason the prices on everything else has gone up is that their wages have gone up if they're in business their profits have gone up and so consequently they have been going up at a faster economic rate in every other segment of the economy then the American farmers have the prices that the farmers receive have been far below the prices that other segments the economy received for for their wages are further or their profits and we have not been sharing as farmers in the general economic increased prosperity in this nation possibly I have a charter to him maybe I don't know all these charts up now and yeah I'll hold them up there and you can well get some shots of something here I have to take a look and see what the chart here first you can watch it right on the screen well fine fine this will be fine well now this not long ago there were a lot of comments about the price of food in New York City so the Secretary of Agriculture was invited to go down and explain it and so these are some of the charts that were used to show this and in the 1 cent price increase on a quart of milk now this is what the farmer received but the price of milk in New York City retail price went up 2 to 3 cents a quart now this is 200-300% of the price that the farmer increased yes now this is now we're not seeing that the other people shouldn't have a profit or shouldn't have a fair price what we're trying to say is that if wages are continued to continue at a profitable level or the president level or if profits are continued the present level the people that work the people that have a business cannot expect the American farmer to have a substandard wage because what's happening and one of the reasons that it's real serious is that the youth in American agriculture has been leaving the farms the average age of farmers is 58 years today and with the average age of farmers at 58 years it means that the the kids that have been growing up on the farm just haven't been staying on the farm and a quart of milk just doesn't happen to be in New York City or Dayton or a pound of beefsteak it just doesn't happen to be in the supermarket it takes an investment it takes a labor and what has happened is that's the youth in American agriculture has been able to pick up a lunch bucket or go into a small business many times with much less investment or maybe practically no investment get much more return that you can get for the big investment in agriculture so if America if the American people are going to have the food they want and desire in that they can have they're going to have to recognize that they're going to have to pay a fair price to the farmers because the kids that are growing up on the farm today the children that are reared on the farm they're going to stay there only because of an economic reason an economic reason means fair income for the American farmer now let's look at this chart here and see all right well well now here's here shows what has happened as far as the value of wheat in the retail price in 1950 a price of a loaf of bread cost 14 cents the same size a loaf of bread today cost 22 cents there 16 years later but the farm value was only two and a half cents or was two and a half cents in the $0.14 loaf but today it's only seven tenths of a cent more and the price has gone up eight cents a loaf I think that's self-explanatory shows farm incomes dragging far behind right well I didn't have to take a look at this one well now this is the increase in a loaf of bread and the price of New York and just in just one year's time July 1st 1965 to 1966 the price of wheat that went into the loaf of bread has increased a half a cent to the farmer but the price of that loaf of bread went up three cents in New York and the increase to the farmer was the one 1/2 cent that's right this is right now here a graph chart yes and here's a graph chart that is very interesting because this shows what has happened and how they study retail food price has gone up and the level that has gone up and using a hundred as a basis there and then when you when you start using all these these basis here of a hundred and you notice here that the price at the retail prices continued to go up as you go on out but then you look down here and the prices received by farmers even though this has gone up you look down across here and you notice that what has happened is you've had this level here that's considerably below while the other price trend has generally gone up this just shows that the farmer certainly has not been profiting from higher food costs and of course food is still the best buy we don't want to forget that in America one ages one hours wages are still buy more food than ever before in the history of our country and last year the disposable income the American people only 18 and 2 tenths percent of the disposable income was spent for food now this was against 26 cents a few years ago or 26 percent we've really already now this shows here the disposable personal income how far the personal income of the farmers has been dragging behind this is the disposable income of a non farm population as you go on up here and this is the disposable income of the farm population last year even though with some increase in price the farmers only received their per capita income was only 2/3 of that of a non farm population and this is the reason that the youth has been leaving in American agriculture simple pure economics alrighty now let me let's get down here mr. Staley to some brass taxes now the farmers all through the history of our country has been a great individualist he hadn't been able to in the years before he'd been able to transact his own business and do as he pleased but now that that agriculture and the mead for food not only in our country but the world over has become so great that this farmer now cannot operate as an as an individual he has got to operate as a that's the thinking behind your old part of an industry and what you've said is so true and the other point is that they the whole structure of buying and selling in America is is so much different than our forefathers as far as they were concerned because farmers used to be great in number but they used to make up well first almost all the population then down to 60% down to 50% and right on down until now about 7% of the total population are farmers but they still produce about a hundred percent of the food although exported percentage-wise not really great value generally on most commodities well this means that with this with this number of farmers still numbering into the millions three and a half million farm operators supposedly but many of those are working off the farm and and you get down there quite a lot smaller number that really do most of the producing of agriculture commodity but these people out here are really selling to buyers that by volume that buy all over the nation and frankly it's just a change of climate and the economics involved that the farmers no longer the individuals they can't do anything about it they can't operate anymore that way last week mister steady from our news service this story came over and I'd like to read part of this to you and to the folks and then that had your coming million dollar farms will become prominent in tomorrow's agriculture said to leading two economists attending a meeting in that in Maryland Dr. Walter Butcher and Norm Witilskin they were Washington State University had these comments they said farm farming in the near future is likely to have more in common with the base factories than with many of today's farms do you believe that well I think that the really the answer to that question is whether the present farmers group their production together in sufficient numbers to be able to bargain effectively to get a fair price if they get a fair price then they will be able to maintain an individual type investment now if they do not and this gets back to the age of farmers 58 years of age most of the land today that when the farmer leaves because of age because of health is bought by the adjoining farm this soon means not a hundred thousand dollar investment it soon means two hundred thousand at some point this investment gets so large that there is no way for a young man to really start because the investment is prohibitive now the only reason that the young people are not staying on the farm is and certainly we know that a hundred thousand dollar investment is a good investment in any business but the return on the investment has been so low even if it's one hundred or two hundred thousand dollars farm that it's been so low that it was not attractive enough they could beat it with a lunch bucket with no investment without the risk now if this investment continues to get higher then it'll get so individuals cannot really invest in it and at this point corporate agriculture will take over and that's what you're talking about in a million-dollar operation those people organize yeah but these this is not what you're in favor of you know one favor of keeping this individual out there farming the way he wants to farm and growing what he want on this is the basis of a free enterprise society and really if you get into a large operations like that you lose the individual initiative well this is a pretty a pretty forceful statement I'm going to say but I want to be sure that it's understood when you have lose the individual initiative in agriculture so there isn't the desire to be there to milk that cow because you own the cow to be there when the soy fells because the sow or to put in the extra hours to raise a corn or grain because it's yours when they have to employ the help to do it you lose the individual incentive the individual initiative that's made America great and it's really no difference in the communes or the collective farms in Russia because they've lost their incentive and there's never been an agriculture in the world that has ever been efficient that was not a private family type agriculture we don't want to see it destroyed that's right these funds go on to say that says farm sizes will be way up farm numbers way down million dollar capitalization will be commonplace volume output will approximate today's factory production well I think that this is a good warning to the consuming public duty unless and we're making great gains because we have been able just now bring enough strength together in 25 states to be able to deal with seven of the nation's leading processors and meet many of the nation's leading processors in dairy and grain and because we've been able to deal with them were able to use our production that's raising the general price level on the commodities that we've been working on this is where we see the scene the price rises but if farmers do not continue to develop as bargaining power and this type of agriculture that they're predicting and these are not the only influential people there these people are doing it some of the credit structures beginning to point toward this if this type of Agriculture comes about they will organize they will be the same people with the investment that they invest in many other large corporations in America and they've learned the first thing they have to do is to determine their cost after they've determined their cost to decide what price they're going to have to have in order to get a fair return on the investment now this is what will happen and with that type of an agriculture was much less efficiency than the type of ownership we have today American people will really pay the price for food that's right now let's keep glancing at the clock here because there's so many things we want to talk about now let's get back to your organization's that works as far and now we're talking right to the homeless in violation to the farmer how for instance does you have a a group here in is it a county do you work by counties or yes by district sir how do they go what we do we organize I say we organize its farmers only farmers yes and they they find the farmers interested in the county they explain what we're doing it used to be what we were trying to do but now what we're doing their progress we're making and how they explain this program to them for the purpose of them explaining into their neighbors now after enough of them they've joined the first it takes a minimum of 25 we get much more than many more than that but they are the real businessmen in this county because it takes a real businessman to understand what we're talking about and so this is the reason that the leading farmers in most of the communities immediately grasp this business approach and then they set up their organization with the county and then when the counties are organized with a congressional district a congressional district organization is set up and then a state but the difference between our organization the basic structure in this very vital is that the membership in the county elect the delegates they go to a national convention where the policies are determined right from the grassroots we had about 10,000 members there that had been elected last year I'm actually convinced that look and they sit there and they make the decisions this is a grassroots approach farmers from this county this county in every county throughout the 25 state area so this is the way the policies are really but they have to be ad establish but they must be farmers and producers in order to be members our organization cannot go into business we have only one thing to offer and that's the opportunity for farmers to join together they own their production first but they must bargain before it's sold or they lose their bargaining pot now just dead yeah just how does it work now say that I'm a I'm a member of your organization and I've got some nice beef cattle time comes to sell this beef cattle out how do you help me well there's there was really two phases at the present time this is the reason we had to have holding actions are go over contracts with processes where the price will be determined at least 12 months in advance there will be a changing price within the year because the difference in the cost of production there will be the ability to change the incentives to well in order to get lower lighter weight cattle in if their finished cattle or hogs or stocks now this this is the processor you're talking about you're talking about the man is selling it to the processor no this is the farmer but now the contracts will be between the farmer and the the processor but in this phase we now have at where the processes are accepting supply of NFO members as such and this gives the members the opportunity to move their production into a new marketing pattern they're not doing it in one state or one area they're doing it all over in in the ability to use their production to bargain means simply that by moving production and volume and a new marketing pattern they're doing it here in Ohio moving into new marketing patterns on a volume basis meets a volume buyers need this this does a good job for the buyer it also makes it possible for the farmers to use their production in volume to be effective and the next thing that happens is that as this volume moves out of an area the remaining buyers must compete more to get their supply and then they have to go out into other areas and this sets off a chain reaction which raises the general price level and this is a reason that our bargaining efforts have the effect now of raising the general price level now we our director at the moment he was taking our pictures here as a farmer and he has written down a couple of questions he says he believes in the NFO organization and he wanted to know is how come the NFO did not hold back their grain and livestock along there when you add the holding action well of course in our grain program we have imposition grain sales these imposition grain sales make a chance for the or given farmers the opportunity to pick the time of year they want to sell the first thing that they must do in grain and we're advising our members now is to store at harvest time whole and then bargain together in the period of time that they want to sell their grain now the reason that you cannot hold on livestock over only about a certainly time well yes and you and you increase the tonnage but you had to hold and we held 43 days and we accomplished our objectives because the processors realized but they had to have this volume represented and so we've been making progress in bargaining since we now we can use our production this is an attitude we have to be ready to use a holding action if processors refuse to bargain and good faithful we think with farmers supporting the efforts and realizing it's not the nickel it's not the time it's a dollars that you're counting in the general price rise that you're bringing about through your bargaining effort this first effort was really getting the big foot in the door yes and we had we had I believe four tests holding actions we didn't have this many in this area we organized out there moved on across the country we organized now in almost every productive County in the Pennsylvania line to the western areas of Kansas Nebraska Canadian border and the Tennessee Kentucky Oklahoma but we use those tests actions and a big action in 62 and then a big action in 64 the action at 62 is about 30 days and 64 about 43 but the 64 one was the one that really convinced the processors let's see the farmer getting more money is not necessarily going to raise the cost of food to in a great amount right percentage-wise no I would not want to say to the American consumer that it's not going to cost some more certainly it will but as far as in they use the figures there and they've got to expect it I mean if they're working in a factory producing an automobile the price has been going up on that it's if they're working in any plant the price has been going up on the product and they've gotten better wages well they can't expect the farmer for them to always buy food they're cheap they're just he's happy to go out and buy all these these expensive machines because the farmer nowadays has to have that where you can topple this incremental guys have been going up we get the pipe for his his products has not kept pace right but the percentage of increase that the farmer gets is very small right now we have about a minute and a half for you to kind of sum this up a little bit and I'll just give you your head now about a minute all right I appreciate the opportunity to visit the associate editors a good agricultural area I think that I would say that the most important thing is happening in American agriculture today and the biggest story in American agriculture is the farmers acceptance for the NFO collective bargaining program many owe for a long time there was a great misunderstanding about the collective bargaining program the NFO now it is being accepted farmers are seeing progress made in bargaining they're seeing the NFO's efforts succeed they are now realizing that we are raising the general price level through our bargaining efforts now is a time for the farmers to realize they must bargain industry-wide that they must be under one organization in one bargaining effort to coordinate their efforts we thank you very much mr. Oren least a Lee who is the national president the national farmers organization that comes all the way from would you come from Missouri or are with them all right I came from Iowa last night from Moline earlier this morning we thank you very much we've had a very time time nice to have met you and we hope that we've kind of straightened out maybe NFO in your mind we'll see you folks next Saturday thank you very much we hope you have a wonderful weekend and a nice holiday goodbye thank you thank you this crazy opportunity