1106 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



never grow a pound of potash, and I can never grow a pound of cal- 

 cium. Those things I will have to buy and haul out to that land. A 

 farmer will have to put phosphate and potash and calcium on the land 

 as long as he or his sons or his sons' sons operate the land, and it should 

 be considered in the cost of production although it never has been. 



Now I don't care what plan is adopted by the committee, so long- 

 as it has in the very forefront soil conservation. We have lost 50 

 percent of our soil now and we can lose the next 50 percent in half the 

 time it took us to lose the first 50 percent. There are farms all over 

 the United States which are now stark skeletons of what were once 

 good, productive farms. I can drive in an hour from this city to 

 fields with 20-, 25-, or 30-percent slope that there is not a vestige of 

 topsoil on, and which will be in tobacco this year. They will use 1,400 

 pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre. All the tobacco they 

 can hope to grow is just what that fertilizer will produce. 



Farmers don't realize the rate at which we are destroying our top- 

 soil. 



I not only preach soil conservation, but I am a soil conservationist. 

 I have built 20 miles of standard terraces because I was afraid — I had 

 lost half of my topsoil and I was desperately afraid before I could do 

 anything about it I would lose the other half. I have conquered one 

 little stream by terracing the watershed of it so that where it used 

 to rise 9 feet, now it never rises more than. 4 feet, in fact less than that, 

 and it runs clear now whereas it used to run muddy. 



Those are things, again, that I hope this committee will bring out. 

 We need a program which will hold up the farm program in the 

 United States to ever3^body. Everybody has an interest — business, 

 labor, and the professional men, the farmers, even we in Congress 

 ourselves, have a tremendous stake, not only in soil conservation but 

 in the income of the farm. 



The laboring man who gets up in the morning and wants his 

 breakfast, we are the people who furnish it to him. The toast and 

 bacon-and-eggs and orange juice that he has for breakfast, he thinks 

 he goes down to the corner grocery stor(> and gets it. Actually it 

 comes from the farmer through agriculture. 



Ma^^be we think we are smarter than the people of Europe and 

 Asia, but we are not. The reason we can live better than they can 

 live is because we have 3/2 acres of good land for each man, woman, 

 and child in the United States, and Asia has six-tenths of an acre, 

 and Europe has a little over 1 acre. Reduce us to six-tenths of an 

 acre of good soil land in the United States and see what our standard 

 of living becouies. 



I am opposed to the sliding scale of parity from 90 down to 60 

 percent. It will bring back to us the conditions which prevailed in 

 1932, just as surely as two and two make four. I am opposed to that 

 sliding scale of parity. I always will be opposed to it. It won't 

 work, in my opinion, and I am a farmer. 



As soon as the folks don't want me any more, if I am alive I will 

 be out on my farm. 



Now let us talk on regimentation. I will tell you who they are who 

 talk of regimentation. This talk of regimentation is just something 

 for people to load their troubles on who don't believe in having a 

 farm program that will work. It is just something to talk about. 



I would rather have 50 acres of wheat that showed a profit than 

 100 acres of wheat that showed a loss, and it does not take a college 



