MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1950.

OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

WITNESSES

STANLEY ANDREWS, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

FRED J. ROSSITER, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

A. REX JOHNSON, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

C. E. MICHELSON, HEAD, DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

W. H. ROHRMAN, IN CHARGE, BUDGETARY AND FISCAL MANAGEMENT SECTION, DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS

RALPH S. ROBERTS, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND BUDGET OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Mr. WHITTEN. Gentlemen, we have with us Mr. Stanley Andrews, Director of the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations. I would like at this point to have page 174 of the justifications included in the record.

(The page referred to is as follows:)

PURPOSE STATEMENT

The Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations collects, interprets, and disseminates economic data and other information on foreign production and consumption of farm products. Through systematic, regular, and special reports from agricultural attachés abroad (State Department employees) and from specialists on temporary assignment in other countries, and also by exchange of information with foreign governments and international agricultural organizations, the Office obtains current facts that are used to advise American farmers and business firms handling farm products of important developments abroad that affect their interests. The information also aids Congress, other agencies of Government, and United States representatives at international conferences to determine questions of policy.

In addition to these activities, the Office administers a program of technical collaboration with foreign governments whereby scientific and technical services are extended to cooperating countries to aid in management of agricultural stations, public service in agriculture, and research projects, for which the Department of State allocates funds under the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948.

The headquarters staff is located in Washington, D. C., with technical collaborators assigned to eight cooperative stations and four agricultural missions in Latin America. On November 30, 1949, employment totaled 293 employees of whom 55 were in the field.

Appropriated funds:

Estimated, 1950-

Budget estimate, 1951.

$587, 900

623, 400

Mr. WHITTEN. Mr. Andrews, we will be glad to have your general

statement.

Mr. ANDREWs. Mr. Chairman, I have no formal statement to make. I just want to thank this committee and to apologize to the committee if I have given you any inconvenience because of not being able to be present when you wanted me you wanted me a week or more ago. I was in the Far East on a mission under the auspices of the Army which was a result of the request of the National Defense Establishment to the Secretary of Agriculture to do some work out there.

I do not know whether Mr. Voorhees explained that I was out there instead of here where I should have been. He promised to write you. That particular mission did enable us to accomplish some work for national defense and the State Department and, for our own work, I was able to inspect a number of our posts out there. So, I want to apologize if I have inconvenienced the committee.

Mr. WHITTEN. You have not inconvenienced the committee, although we might have heard you a little earlier. I want to say in advance that the line of questioning we will develop today is not directed at you. We all understand you did not take over this position until a very short time ago. But serious questions have been raised as to whether the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations in its present operation is doing any good.

The charge is made that it is subordinate to the Department of State, that it is a trainng ground for those folks who want to get into the State Department but who cannot get on right now, so they get on as agricultural attachés, to mark time until an opening shows up.

There is a real question because the Department of Agriculture has kept your position vacant and while they now have you, you have had this special assignment. All these questions have been gone into by the members of the committee and I want you to know they are not directed at you personally. Most of the things result from the law rather than from you.

Mr. ANDREWS. That is perfectly all right and I would like to answer any questions or hear any criticism.

Mr. WHITTEN. What I have reference to is failures in the basic law and not your people.

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes. I have been here only a short time and my staff, the people around this table, and, I expect, the people here, that is the committee, know more about the OFAR than I do. So, Í will address myself to the formal appropriation and the amount directed to OFAR.

INCREASES REQUESTED FOR 1951

This year the OFAR appropriation is $587,900 including anticipated Pay Act supplemental. The 1951 appropriation is $623,400. The only change in the appropriation as now presented involves some small increases in the funds for Pay Act adjustments, and $20,660 increase in the amount that normally goes for the servicing of international organizations and international agreements. That is the only increase being asked for at this time.

INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS

It grows out of the increased responsibility the Department of Agriculture has in these international agreements and international affairs and the international wheat agreement, the advisory groups which somebody from Agriculture must sit in on if the interest of agriculture is to be looked into.

Up to now, and I am not here to say that the OFAR should do all these things-but somebody has to service these things, has to look into them, follow them through and report, not only to agriculture but to the farmers and the people on farms.

So far they have fallen on OFAR whether they have been done well or not-whether we have met the responsibility, I do not know. In actual fact, that is the only difference between last year and this year. Last year you went into this whole problem very thoroughly and I do not propose to bore you with a long recount of what we have done.

In present international affairs, more and more the problems that take place in other countries and other portions of the world have a direct bearing on agriculture and what happens to the farmer in this country. Once more, I am saying that OFAR people may not be the people to do that job, but somebody should. We have a lot of new countries coming up. Independence is the trend of the world. New governments tend to set up tariffs that will make them self-sufficient before the world.

EFFECT ON AMERICAN AGRICULTURE OF FOREIGN EDICTS

Sometimes a little change in the direction of policy in a government in these new countries will affect what happens to an American farmer out here almost more than what he does himself. And the OFAR has been trying, and I admit we have not been doing the job as well as we should, but we have been trying to touch up these things and bring to bear the attention of the Department of Agriculture and the Government on these issues.

Let me give you a slight illustration of what I am trying to say. If you remember, before the war Italy went very far in the development of synthetics. As a part of its program of self-sufficiency, Mussolini issued a decree in which he said that 25 to 30 percent of all textiles manufactured in Italy must be 35 percent synthetic fiber. That reduced the drain on Italy for American cotton and other items. That continued until the war was over.

We thought we had got these things knocked out of the Italian Government. We thought we got that decree set aside. Italy is trying to save dollars and be self-sufficient, and they were about to reissue that decree which would very materially cut down the consumption of American cotton

Mr. WHITTEN. According to the ECA organization report they say the American dollars made available to them under the Marshall plan or under the ECA program were used to rebuild and build new rayon and synthetic plants and they had raised it through the use of American dollars 30 percent higher than preceding the war, when the Mussolini edict was in effect there. The use of cotton remains 30 or 40 percent below that before the war. So, in spite of OFAR the general

policy in this Government either ignores or does not know of these situations and how these dollars are being used. I happen to come from a cotton State and we have made a study of this.

AGRICULTURAL ATTACHÉS

Mr. ANDREWS. The only point I was trying to illustrate is there is need for some sort of action to at least know of what is happening in the world which affects American agriculture. The other point is, and I will be perfectly honest with you, our attachés-theoretically the State Department hires them and pays them and we are supposed to direct them-are often not in a position to carry the ball as they should in these areas.

In the last 5 or 6 months I have been here working almost continuously with the State Department to help these men and strengthen them to put them in a position where they can represent agriculture out there. We have to do a lot more things than that. Where there is an agriculture specialist in the Foreign Service the State Department needs to recognize him as such. He needs to have the same power in any embassy and the same right to start at the bottom and go to the top of the grade rather than get off into visa stamping to get promotion.

Mr. Brannan has talked with Secretary Acheson and Mr. Peurifoy and we are trying to build a special agricultural set-up in the Foreign Service.

I have been out in the Far East calling on our embassies and places of that kind. There are few agricultural people out there. The Ambassadors say we need agricultural people out there. Ninety percent of these countries are agricultural and the political problems spring out of agriculture. We are anxious to know about the market and for better knowledge about the competition. I think we will be able to strengthen our attachés particularly in the Far East and, I hope, throughout the world.

Mr. WHITTEN. This committee last year provided additional money to your office or the office you now hold, so you could visit and check up on these operations in foreign countries and I personally am pleased to see you recognize the present deficiencies. I want to say that to a large extent it is the fault of the basic law that these agricultural attachés must meet the requirements of the State Department which passes on them and controls them and they have to make their reports through the State Department rather than to the Department of Agriculture.

We have reached the cross roads and I think the Legislative Committee on Agriculture either will turn it over to the State Department or will strengthen it to operate as it should.

Mr. ANDREWS. I am probably not supposed to say it, but I can agree 100 percent with you on that. This matter of reporting seems very simple but when you take a man that has to report around through the State Department to us, it is still reporting to the State Department, not to the Secretary of Agriculture. I think there is a need for a little change in administration or in the law whereby that man can report direct to the Secretary of Agriculture and all the extra copies can go around through State in the regular channels. That