Panel Moderator: 

 Ted Schtvinden 

 Governor of Montana 



I'd like to introduce Vne next two panelists that 

 we're fortunate to tiave this morning, Governor 

 Herschler It is appropriate that a farmer gets to intro- 

 duce a couple of folks who are going to talk about 

 food in the West, because the issue certainly goes 

 beyond the West. It goes to the American productive 

 machinery that puts so much food on the tables of 

 Americans and the rest of the world 



Dr Castle talked about the potential impacts of a 

 vanety of factors on food and food costs. The 

 Department of Agriculture has recently projected that 

 farm income levels this year will drop to approximately 

 1935 levels. In terms of public policy and in terms of 

 who's going to be doing the farming, this is going to 

 have some impact on cost down the road. 



I think it's important that we examine in our discus- 

 sion this morning the productive system — whether 

 it's going to change radically as a result of the erratic 

 changes in the status of farm prices and in terms of 

 the change that's occurring, sometimes subtley and 

 sometimes fairly dramatically, in terms of the owner- 

 ship of the American farm production machine, if we 

 can call it that. 



Certainly one of the areas that will impact, if not 

 ownership, at least the cost of food production and 

 the future role that the West will have in supplying 

 food, is represented by our next panel participant this 

 morning, and that's Mr. Richard Bressler. 



To simply introduce Dick Bressler as the Chairman 



of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer of Bur- 

 lington Northern Incorporated, a relatively new holding 

 group with interest in the area of transportation, real 

 estate, and forest products interests, is a misleading 

 introduction because those areas of interest, of 

 course, are tied very closely to the present and future 

 of the West, especially in terms of cost and the ade- 

 quacy and the availablility of transportation. The utili- 

 zation of resources, particularly of timber and energy, 

 are a part of the holding company 



Dick is a member of the President's Export Council 

 and serves on its agricultural subcommittee. He has 

 had a lot of publicity lately, which reflects the fact that 

 he is one of this nation's leading transportation and 

 agribusiness executives Certainly in terms of states 

 like Governor Olson's and my own and indeed all of 

 the West, the role that particularly transportation 

 plays — just as the railroads in the 19th century, in 

 effect, dictated the settlement patterns of the West to 

 a significant degree — in the ability of the West to 

 compete in terms of food production The future is 

 going to depend upon the availability and the viability 

 of that transportation system. 



Mr. Dick Bressler. . . 



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