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is lower price. No consumer wants to have the prices any higher than 

 they are at present. What they want is a lov/er price for the product. 

 Along with lower prices, the consumers want better quality. They want 

 to pay less for better goods, and along with that they want to have the 

 marketing at least as convenient as it is at present. These are the three 

 things they want: lower prices, better quahty and convenience. 



The producers, on the other hand, are looking forward to receiving 

 higher prices, with the maximum degree of convenience. They are look- 

 ing forward to having higher prices, while the consumers are looking 

 forward to having lower prices. The consumer also wants better quality, 

 and both want to have things just as convenient as they are now, or more 

 convenient if possible. These then are the factors that we have to 

 consider. 



The methods of attacking this problem which are open to the con- 

 sumer — and I think most of the people to whom I am speaking today are 

 consumers or are interested in the consumer's end of the game — are, first, 

 encourage the farmers to improve the method of producing the product, 

 both by lowering its cost and improving its quality. If the farmers could 

 produce their products at less cost and also produce better products, then 

 they would really be getting better pay for their labor after all. If they 

 really did not get any more per dozen, but they produced more dozens of 

 eggs at the same price per dozen, they would be able to make more profit 

 than now. 



Thus, one method of attack is simply by improved methods of pro- 

 duction. You can talk a long time about improved methods of produc- 

 tion. You can go out among the farmers and tell them that they ought 

 to do this and ought to do that, and it is the easiest thing in the world to 

 tell them how much better you could do if you owned the place, but you 

 have never been in their place probably and cannot appreciate their 

 viewpoint. If many of us were to put ourselves in their place, possibly 

 we could talk more sensibly than we can now, and this is probably the 

 reason that it is so commonly said that ^'you can talk and talk and talk 

 to the farmer, and yet when you go back you will find that the farmers 

 have not changed their method a bit." No matter what you tell them, 

 they will not change their methods, because their methods are better, 

 they say, and they have been trying it for a long time. There is natu- 

 rally competition among farmers, and we would indeed expect that in 

 any certain community after generations of experiments, very good 

 methods of farming have already been adopted. These farmers have 

 been doing the same thing for many years, and have adopted just exactly 

 what they have thought to be the best methods. 



We have found incidentally that the only way to really change the 

 farmer's methods of production, the only way to improve them rapidly, 

 is to actually show the farmer that there is a better method, if there is 

 any such better method — actually show them that there is a better 



