GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



1019 



tung industry because of a transaction with one tung miller that 

 proved unpleasant? 



We think this CCC-Wallis matter should be looked into by the 

 Congress to avert any further reprisals on a young struggling industry 

 for something which it is not responsible for. 



WHY TUNG MUST HAVE PARITY 



The parity system of Government price supports was devised to 

 assure the farmer a fair price for his products in relation to the price 

 of manufactured commodities he must buy. 



No fair-minded Member of the Congress can possibly study the 

 record of the price of tung nuts and tung oil during the past 12 years 

 without realizing that the American tung farmer must have some sort 

 of aid and protection from his Government if his industr}^ is to sur- 

 vive. Every tung farmer in this country — and there are more than 

 5,000 of them — is facing ruin and bankruptcy. The price of his 

 product must be stabilized, he must be assured of a decent price, or 

 he will of necessity be forced to abandon his orchards. No farmer, 

 or group of farmers, can continue indefinitely to grow a crop and sell 

 it at a loss. 



In asking for parity the American tung farmer is content to accept 

 no more or no less for his crop than the application of the parity sys- 

 tem will allow him. The American tung farmer is asking no more 

 than what is being given his competitors, the growers of soybeans 

 and flaxseed. It is a matter of simple justice that he receive the 

 same aid they are receiving and that is all he asks. 



A study of the comparative prices of oil seeds and fats and oils from 

 1937 to 1949 presents incontrovertible proof that the American tung 

 industry has not only been discriminated against in the refusal of a 

 support price but has been made the victim of an international 

 squeeze play that has just about squeezed the life out of the infant 

 industry. 



The most recent release of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 

 United States Department of Agriculture, on the fats and oil situa- 

 tion, dated February 11, 1949, covering the period of November, 

 December, and to January 21, 1949, contains two tables, one com- 

 paring the prices received by farmers for cottonseed, peanuts, soy- 

 beans, flaxseed and tung nuts (page 8) and the other (page 11) on 

 the wholesale prices of certain fats and soils, including butter, lard, 

 cottonseed oil, soybean oil, coconut oil, inedible tallow, linseed oil, 

 and tung oil. 



Here are the tables, exactly as carried in this bulletin: 



Price received by farmers 



Item 



1948 pre- 

 liminary 



Cottonseed, per short ton 



Peanuts, per pound 



Soybeans, per bushel 



Flaxseed, per bushel 



Tung nuts, per short ton. 



1C.60 

 2.39 

 5.75 



54.70 



