You can grow excellent crops if you maintain the fertility by retaining your topsoil.

Mr. EMBREE. Yes.

Senator THYE. I have driven all through the area and I am familiar with the land. I was with the Federal land bank and for that reason I know your bottom soil and I know your topsoil, because considering it was one of our jobs in appraisals for the land bank. If you can retain your soil on the hill by proper soil management and farm management, it will practically produce year after year because you are not subject to the floods or excessive wet conditions.

Your whole thought on the ever-normal granary idea is that of maintaining prices that will not ruin you if you have a bumper crop since prices would naturally decline with those bumper crops.

That is about what you see in the ever-normal granary.

Mr. EMBREE. Yes; with the exception of our perishable crops. I do not like to have the consumer acuse us of destroying potatoes and the like. I would suggest on that that the farmer be given parity and the Federal Government make a subsidy payment to him and let the consumer get the benefit of that.

I just give it to you as a thought. We store our corn for the evernormal granary, which is just as important to the consumer, and I would like to have the consumer understand that a little better, and to give him a break, I would attempt to sell him two heads of cabbage for the price of one or two hams for the price of one that he could put a little ever-normal granary in the refrigerator and he would get interested in taking care of the surpluses.

After all, he is paying the bills and that consumer is uppermost in the farmers' minds. On that topsoil that is one thing. Our topsoil is good but we have places where our soil goes up like this and the topsoil is gone. We do not farm it any longer. I can see several of them from our house. They are small and they are few but they are getting larger and larger fast.

There is just one more thing and that is our elected committeemen. I realize the Extension Service and Soil Conservation Service have their place. I work with them, but I do feel that we, as farmers, are capable of electing our own committeemen. I believe we are capable of electing men who are capable just as we elect you men who go ahead and do the job for us, and I believe we should elect the committeemen. Senator THYE. That is what the bill provides. You elect your county committeemen, whose chairmen elect the agricultural council at the State level, which gives you farm-elected producer-elected representation right up to the policy-forming level.

Mr. EMBREE. I do not want him elected for an hour, a day or something of that kind. If he is elected to do it, I want him to do it and if he does not do it, I want to be able to vote against him.

I want him to have control. If he hires someone to help him, I do not want an executive secretary. I want him to do it because I want to get after him if I do not like him and vote against him.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Embree, have you in mind any recommendations on legislation now pending in Congress that you think might be helpful to the farmers of your State if enacted by this Congress?

Mr. EMBREE. I look at it as a farmer and locally and how it affects me more. In fact, I have not been in Washington, you know, but just

a short time. I do not study national issues quite so much as to say I particularly approve of this, approve of some bill, but if those bills will leave it in the hands of the farmer, I will be satisfied.

The CHAIRMAN. You think you get along pretty well?

Mr. EMBREE. I have enough faith in a farmer that would be elected that I would leave the program in his hands. I am a little skeptical of someone else who is not a farmer.

Senator WILSON. You do not want an agricultural list at all.

Mr. EMBREE. Those men have their places. I like to talk to them but I want them working with us, not over us.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Embree.

Mr. EMBREE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. We would now like to hear from Mr. Leo C. Herold of Fort Atkinson, Iowa.

STATEMENT OF LEO C. HEROLD, FORT ATKINSON, IOWA

I

Mr. HEROLD. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Leo C. Herold. I live on a farm in northeastern Iowa. have lived there all my life.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you belong to any farm organizations?

Mr. HEROLD. Well, I have belonged to several of them. I am not representing any, and in fact today I think I am more or less fighting them all because I am representing farmers and not organizations, not farm organizations, what you have in mind.

Now I am one of these farmers who were feeding cattle back in 1933 and 1934 and just about went busted.

Senator THYE. You could not sell them for the same price you paid for them just by driving them about 5 miles?

Mr. HEROLD. That is right. We lost all we had. We had to start over, but that is no new story to you people because that is true of all of us.

I certainly have a warm spot in my heart for what you people through Washington, through the Department of Agriculture, have done for us farmers. I have come down here to protect some of our interests and talk to you about them and see that you do not destroy any of the good things you have done in the past.

Now, of course, one thing I would like to comment on before I go into the farm program, is the discussion this morning, which was very long, on the Soil Conservation Service, and I see the Extension Service is trying to more or less dominate that program, which I cannot understand, because if we turn the Soil Conservation Service over to Extension Service, as the Extension people are asking for it today, we are certainly going to destroy the soil-conservation districts because your Extension agents are those out in Iowa-are tied to a farm organization which they are responsible for hiring and firing for, and how an Extension agent could serve two masters, as this man put it this morning, I do not know.

So I cannot understand how the Soil Conservation Service could be thrown into the lap of Extension Service and come out of that. That is a problem in my mind.

Senator THYE. Are you a member of the soil conservation committee in your county?

Mr. HEROLD. Yes; I am a district commissioner in my county. One thing I want to bring out is that those commissioners and I serve without a cent of money in pay.

Senator WILSON. That is right.

Mr. HEROLD. But if you are going to turn that over to the Extension Service, you are going to eliminate the districts as I see it. That I do not want to happen. That is why I do not want Soil Conservation thrown into the lap of Extension or turned over to them even if you are thinking of coordination. It may be all right, but that is one thing that is not going to fit out in Iowa.

That is one thing I have in mind. Maybe if we had some separation of farm organizations and extension, that would be worked out, but as it is at the present time I cannot understand it. Maybe I am not broad enough to see that but I cannot see that.

Now I am going to change and talk about the farm program which, like I said, was vitally important to all of us, and talk about the farm program. Soil conservation in any form is important, in my mind. As I told you, I have come down to Washington to protect our interests in soil conservation. We want to save the soil and from the standpoint of farm income soil conservation is a great thing. We must save our soil.

We have to go one step further.

That farmer must have an income. If he is losing that farm, soil conservation is not going to mean a thing to him. He is going to want to have an income while he is living on the farm and only through this Federal farm program of the ACP can I see that we are going to guarantee him through an ever normal granary and parity price, an income, whereby he can afford to live on the farm.

Senator WILSON. In other words, on the ever normal granary you want it so adjusted as it is now, whereby the farmer in the glut time of harvest will not be compelled to market his stuff?

Mr. HEROLD. Yes, sir; and I want a loan large enough so that he is not in jeopardy at the time, 100 percent, not a floating 50- or 60percent loan.

I am like Mr. Embree. I think our farmers are smart enough to run their own business. We do not want to take it away from them and put it in the hands of any secretary they hire. They are for agriculture. I do not want you to limit the time they are going to serve. I have confidence that they will do the job and if they have to serve night and day they will do it. I do not want to limit them so they can serve only 1 day, 1 hour, or 1 week in the month. You give them the time and they will get the job done.

We are mighty interested in hearing what is going on down in Washington. It is interesting to hear this discussion going on. I have learned a lot. I think this group of men after they hear all this testimony will come out with a program that will do us farmers some good. I am happy to have been here and if you have any questions I shall be glad to answer them.

Senator WILSON. We are very happy that you came down here. It has been the desire and was the desire, of the entire committee when we started the investigation or hearings on the long-range program to get out to the grass roots and get statements such as you have made here today, so we appreciate the fact that you appeared here today. Mr. HAROLD. I made this statement: The railroads want to get some

thing done, they do not ask the farmers to do it for them; if the packers want to get something done they do not ask the farmers to do it for them; or if any industry or organization wants something done, they are not going to ask the farmers to do it.

But when farmers want to have something done, we do not want any other group to tell us how to do it.

We feel we come from the Middle West where we actually produce the food and, by golly, we like to have a hand in saying how it shall be produced.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for a fine statement. We are pleased you came to see us.

that

Mr. HAROLD. I am glad to be here.

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is Joe Roose, of Allison, Iowa.

STATEMENT OF JOE ROOSE, ALLISON, IOWA

Mr. ROOSE. Gentlemen, I am very happy to be here and very proud to get the chance to talk before this group, the Senators of the United States.

I am a farmer like the other boys who have spoken here before me. I own 160 acres of land and operate 40 acres which I rent in addition; 200 acres in all.

The CHAIRMAN. Were you born on an Iowa farm?

Mr. ROOSE. I was born and raised on an Iowa farm, all within a mile of where I live today. My education is limited. I got all my education in a little old schoolhouse in that territory. I went through the tough days of 1932 and in the early thirties. I had just started farming at that time. It was mighty tough.

I like to think of AAA, which I always call it, still do, as it was first brought out, the old Agricultural Adjustment Administration. I think that 90 percent of the people still think about it in that way, and I think that there is just as much call for adjustment in agriculture today as there ever was.

We cannot deny that AAA did a wonderful job. Back in 1933 we were selling corn for 8 and 10 cents a bushel; hogs for 2 cents. I cannot even make my own son, who is a sophomore in high school, believe that we sold hogs and cattle and corn at such prices. I have record books which I have kept since 1933. I had to get out those records to prove to that boy that the prices were down that low, that we could not make enough to even pay our expenses, to say nothing of paying our taxes or interest. It was very tough.

When I got that first corn loan I was as tickled as a kid with a stick of candy. It helped me to pay some of my bills. I think it helped the businessman pay some of his. It helped everyone, and as we got those parity payments it helped everyone, even labor, industry, the manufacturer, the businessman. It helped them all.

It just goes to prove that when we have a prosperous agriculture we have a prosperous nation, and you cannot have a strong nation without strong agriculture. I feel that our business as farmers is the most important and the most essential business of all. We raise the food which feeds the people of the world, not only this Nation but all nations.

We may talk of our great armies, our great navies, our great businesses, our great industries; none of them would be very important

and we would not get very far or last very long without the food that the farmer produces.

I believe, like the other fellows, that soil conservation is very essential, and I can see day by day how the minerals, the elements of the soil, the fertility is being taken out of this soil, and I can see nothing else but starvation in the future for our people with the increased population that we now have, increasing every day and every year. Our fertility is not increasing; it is decreasing. We not only have erosion by water and wind; we also have the mining of our fertility, which we have done in years past. The lime and the phosphate helps to rebuild the fertility of our soil.

There are farms right in my own township, right in my own county, and many of them that do not erode by wind or water; they are flat like my own, but they are already so poor and so worn out that it does not pay to operate them. They will not grow enough stuff to pay the cost of production. There must be lime and phosphate and reseeding done on that land in order to get it back into production. That is one of the things AAA has done. All of the farmers who have gone with AAA have rebuilt and maintained and conserved their farms to a very high degree.

I was elected as a township committeeman back in 1935 or 1936. I was an alternate up to that time, but I was a township committeeman then. In 1944 I was elected to the county office and have been there ever since.

This year we had a sign-up of over 2,000 farmers out of over 2,400 farms in Butler County, which shows a pretty good average and what the farmers really think of AAA and what it has done. I always call it AAA because that is what it is to me and always has been and to thousands of farmers that I know. I would hate to lose it.

Senator THYE. Mr. Roose, if I may interrupt there, the bill provides that you do exactly that, your township, your county, but it goes one step further; it permits you as county chairman to elect the members to the State council so that you get right up to the top and are able to assist in the formulation of the program that you are going to administer down here on the county and township level.

That is the provision of the bill. That would give you just one step further in the formulating of the program that you so well and ably know should be, because nobody could know what is good for the community as much as the man who actually tills the land and watches it year by year, either erode or he is able to conserve the fertility.

So that the provision of the bill goes one step further and permits you as a county committeeman to elect members to represent you on the State council or on the State level.

Mr. ROOSE. Well, does the bill provide funds so that the committeemen should not be limited to the time spent to administer this program?

Senator THYE. The provision for funds would be just exactly the

same.

Mr. ROOSE. It takes time. Sometimes I spend one day in the county office, one day a week, sometimes two or three, just as many as it takes. Sometimes I work nights to get the job done.

Senator THYE. It does not limit you.

Mr. ROOSE. It does not?