BANKING OUR SOIL

...In 1957 anyone can watch the auto industry adjust its weekly production to retail sales reports...

...On the other hand, if that tillable land were lease-purchased at the rate of $300 an acre, it would cost less than half, or about $18,000 million...

...His books include "The Future of Our Natural Resources," "Our Conservation Job," and "Pensions in the Economy...

...Farming might stop being the runt pig in the litter...

...But this increased productivity has not helped their incomes much...

...One suggestion might be made, to get that thinking started...

...Certainly some new thinking about the relation of agriculture to the rest of our society is in order...

...The principal question about the soil bank is whether it is a development in our agriculture required to accompany the terrific technological advance farmers have been making...

...your soil until you needed to draw it out again...

...It deserves a better and more thoughtful look than the short-term approach it has had up to now...

...Then it would be sold back to the original owner...

...Some land would get more, some less...

...Their land, from 1958 on, would be in the new soil bank until it was needed again for production...

...After finding no merit at all in the idea for a while, the Department of Agriculture switched and found it wonderful—the answer to its problem of surplus disposal...

...Gradually some of the original money would be refunded to the government...

...Conservationists believe this can become a great factor in increasing wild-life and outdoor recreation...

...The increased productivity of our basic acreage is simply jumping beyond our domestic needs...

...Their achievements in getting more per acre each year have been spectacular...

...Just as factories close down for a while when there is a glut of autos or TV sets or washing machines, so some of the farm-factory, or acreage, might be shut down for a while...

...If it is a necessary development, then it should be considered as a 20 or 30 year, or longer, term proposition...

...In the 1957-58 budget the sums approach $5 billion—neither hay nor chicken-feed...

...Each group realizes that a lower price is needed for the foreign market...

...The minute the farmers and the taxpayers begin considering it as a long-term necessity, and as an alternative to the present price-support system, one glaring fact stands out...

...The farm groups, in turn, would say, after a referendum, "Let us spend that money each of 10 years in lease-purchasing land, and we will hold the land for all the farmers...

...Meanwhile there would be fewer surpluses...

...Three major sectors of U. S. agriculture have been thinking about widening their markets by exporting wheat, cotton and, more recently, dairy products...

...In effect, Congress would say, "We are willing to spend $1.9 billion a year for farm support...

...The other is that as surpluses pile up in the government stockpile, the program calls upon farmers to reduce their acreage in the basic crops...

...At the end of 20 years 60 million acres in the acreage reserve would have cost $37,680 million at the average 1957 payment per acre per year...

...They were cut again in 1957...

...Some wheat land in the drouth area, which wasn't going to produce much anyhow, was put into the bank, as was some cotton land...

...In 1956, for example, despite special circumstances favoring heavy exports, the stockpile was only reduced from $8.7 billion to $8.2 billion...

...They have to hunt for other crops to plant, and that often results in inefficient use of their land and equipment...

...That is less than we have been spending...

...there is over-production almost all around the circle...

...A man might switch from wheat to corn, from corn to sorghum, from sorghum to oats, to barley, to hogs and all around again and still not find any place where he could get much more income...

...They are suffering from that failure...

...The soil bank has two parts...

...The payments per acre, which were reasonable for a short-term proposition, become unreasonable on the long-term base...

...While some of the farm groups are thinking out their own problems with renewed vigor, an over-all look at the whole farm situation is still lacking...

...For example, if it is necessary to buy 200 million bushels of wheat to support prices, the out-of-pocket cost might be $2.50 per bushel, the total $500 million, and...

...Each is consequently thinking about a two-price system...

...But, by payments for acreage reserve at the 1957 rate of $1.20 a bushel, the soil bank can eliminate those 200 million bushels for $240 million, a cost cut of $135 million or 36 per cent...

...The costs to the taxpayers for each dollar of net farm income would also drop...

...There are several things the farmers do not like about the present price support system...

...Here lies a real problem: Is it possible for the nation to help the fanners adequately and still save themselves about $950 million a year in costs...

...The farmer would have to work a little less hard, but would still make about the same amount of money, perhaps even a little more...

...Neither high support prices nor low support prices seem to stem the production increases...

...Meanwhile, the soil bank was hurried into hit-or-miss operations for 1956, and some $250 million were spent on it...

...But if output per acre, per cow, and per hen increases as rapidly as it has recently, and continues to outstrip demand, price support levels will be decreased even further, surpluses will pile up even more, and crop allotments will be cut still more...

...When that kind of saving is spread across the whole field of price supported products it can run into big money...

...This is called the "acreage reserve...

...The weighted average for the year is about $31.40 per acre...

...Not only was there no immediate increase in farm prices —because it was not started on a big enough scale to offset Department of Agriculture sales out of the stockpile —but it was started on too lush a basis...

...What the farmers have failed to copy from the industrial sector is the process of adjusting supply to demand at a price that is satisfactory to the producers...

...At the rate of the average soil bank payment in 1957 that would involve a government cost of about $1.9 billion, which would go directly to the farmers...

...This was a "quickie" decision that may ultimately cost the taxpayers as much as $19 billion over the next 20 years...

...They called this idea the "soil bank": to bank STEPHEN RAUSHENBUSH, executive director of the Public Affairs Institute, has written widely of the land, agriculture, and conservation...

...Substantial appropriations have been made for a long time to help them out...

...Except for meat animals, the government price support purchasing props up most of the major crops as well as milk...

...The present method of handling the situation is getting out of hand and becoming unbearably expensive...

...What a really adequate soil bank can offer these farmers is an end to surpluses...

...However, the Department thought of it only as a short-time answer, a four-year job that would help it get rid of its enormous stockpile and then disappear from the scene...

...The more efficient and productive aeries will get more, even much more, and the below-average acres will get less...

...In some cases the payments were large enough to induce fancy land-financing, which discredited the program...

...The soil bank offers farmers a real opportunity to assume responsibility, accomplish their income objectives, and lower— perhaps even end—the farm burden which the taxpayers have been carrying...

...In May Secretary Benson decided that since allotments could hardly be cut further, prices had to be allowed to drop...

...Also, the big landowners were able to reap big benefits while small farmers gained little...

...If the farmers were organized regionally they might propose, and Congress might possibly agree (in view of the saving of over $19 billion in 20 years), to contract with the regional farm organizations...

...In addition farm prices on the remaining 95 per cent of the production ought to move up about 10 per cent...

...That money would buy the land several times over...

...We may be helpless to save ourselves that much money...

...the net and final cost $375 million...

...A few years ago, some farm students and leaders began to think of copying the industrial practice of adjusting supply to demand...

...For example, the cotton raiser who in 1957 gets a $54.15 payment for each acre he puts into the soil bank, would draw $541.50 per acre over a ten-year period, and $1,083 over a period of twenty years...

...They have copied one, and only one, of the factors which have made the industrial sector of our society such a success—technological advance...

...Within ten years the farmers would have been paid in full...

...The farmer gets only $10 per acre that is put into the reserve plus some help in putting trees or other protection on it...

...One is that the support levels seem lower than they should be...

...Farmers, who number millions and produce a great variety of products, have so far been unable to copy this most important industrial process...

...When population had grown enough, or when foreign nations were able to buy more, your banked land would come back into use...

...About $179 million was put into corn land in the middle of a semi-political effort to keep all corn prices up...

...At the end of ten years Congress will not have to appropriate any more big money at all...

...The end of surpluses can be achieved by a cut of about five per cent in the acreage devoted to the price-supported crops and dairy products, say a cut of 60 million acres...

...There is no easy answer...

...The stick part requires that those farmers who do not put a certain minimum share of their land into the acreage reserve may not always get as high price supports as those who do put that share into the soil bank...

...The Department of Agriculture expects that in 1957 about 15 million acres of wheat land, five million acres of cornland, and four million acres of cotton land, plus some rice and tobacco lands, will be put into the acreage reserve—about 25 million acres—for a total payment of $750 million...

...The most important is devoted to the retirement of tillable land actually devoted to crops...

...The time had come to forget campaign promises...

...The studies made show that the farm income would be higher under such two-price systems than under the present price-support systems at, say, 90 per cent of parity prices...

...Less taxpayer help would be needed in the form of price-supports to prop up those crops which were produced...

...And that, after the present stockpile has been lowered, means the prospect of higher prices...

...The corn farmer would be getting $426.60 and $853.20 per acre...

...Yet farm income in the meantime could be expected to rise considerably—possibly 30 per cent...

...It didn't do much good except as a relief measure...

...It can be put into trees or seeded, but it must not be pastured or harvested...

...But its delay plus additional delay by Congress prevented the idea from getting adopted in time to be of much use in 1956...

...This job of adjusting output to demand requires organization and cooperation...

...During those ten years the wheat, cotton, and milk crops could work out and apply their two-price systems, and gradually adjust their production to the varying demands at different price levels...

...This short-term quickie approach turned many Americans against the soil bank idea...

...The land is to be put aside, given a green cover to protect it, and left unharvested and un-pastured until it goes back into crop use...

...Its hopes for the conservation reserve vary between five and ten million acres...

...Possibly the farmers—or the taxpayers—can figure this one out...

...That land would go into the new soil bank at once...

...For now there is not simply over-production in one crop, such as wheat...

...But there are limits to the capacity of the export markets to reduce surpluses...

...For putting this tillable land aside, the wheat farmer in 1957 is going to get an average of $20.04, the corn farmer $42.66, and the cotton grower $54.15 per acre...

...The second part of the soil bank is the "conservation reserve," which is expected to cover the less productive land...

...None of it would be spent for transportation, handling, and storage costs...

...If the business of buying wheat, dairy products, corn, and almost everything else results in a loss of only 50 per cent, the cost of the soil bank (the net and final cost) will not be much less than the final cost of price supports...

...Nobody wants the government to own five per cent of every farmer's land, yet it would take government money to lease-purchase the land...

...With the first year's grant of $1.9 billion the farm groups would enter lease-purchase arrangements on 60 million tillable acres at $300, say, per acre...

...They are not suffering from lack of concern on the part of the public...

...Too much of anything means low prices...

...But if surpluses pile up much higher and the loss on government stockpile disposal gets to be three-quarters of the out-of-pocket cost of price supports, then the soil bank will be much easier on the taxpayers than the price-support system...

...Left alone, the farm situation may get worse rather than better...

...Those payments are the carrot part of the arrangement...

...It is hard to see how the farmers or the taxpayers could lose on this sort of an arrangement...

...The basic job will be done...