Dr. BERTRAND. No sir, not all of it. Most is in our budget. They communicate their needs to us and we do our best to respond to those needs within our budget.

WEED CONTROL IN SOYBEANS

I would like to call on Dr. Warren Shaw, who I believe is in the room, to answer your question on weeds.

Dr. SHAW. We are very proud of our national weed program. We have about 72 of the finest scientists in the country who work with several hundred scientists from the agricultural agencies of the 50 states and the industry.

To answer your question about soybeans in the states, we have more than 20 herbicides that are used today for the control of weeds in soybeans. We know the weeds can be controlled more efficiently if we close the rows down from 30 inches down to 18 inches or 20 inches. We know we can control the weeds more effectively if we increase the density of planting in the row.

So if we increase the plant population, we reduce tillage and can use selective herbicides, we can do the best job of controlling weeds today of any country in the world.

There is no one else who can equal us. I am familiar with soybean weed control.

Mr. MYERS. They are getting 55 bushels to 60 bushels per acre down there. We cannot do it.

Dr. SHAW. We are doing it, too.

Mr. MYERS. Not in my state.

Dr. SHAW. Last year some weather was against us, but we can produce 55 bushels of soybeans in some counties in Indiana.

I think we do have some 55-bushel yields in Indiana, although the state average if below that.

ROPE WICK APPLICATOR

We have some tremendous new devices. One of them is here today. We call it the rope wick applicator. We discovered this in Mississippi in 1976 and patented it in 1978.

There are some 108,000 of those applicators today. We use them on soybeans, on nearly 20 million acres of all crops last year. They control weeds that grow above soybeans.

We feel this rope wick applicator

Mr. TRAXLER. Would you hold that up for us?

Dr. SHAW. Certainly.

[Demonstration given.]

Dr. SHAW. This is mounted on the front of a tractor. It is a nylon rope. It can be mounted on the rear of the tractor. It can be adjusted for any height and any weed that passes under it will receive the herbicide.

Now if you were broadcasting this, you would use one pound of the herbicide. If you use this, you will use five grams of the herbicide. We saved $100 million last year on 20 million acres of land that were treated with this herbicide.

Mr. MYERS. And the herbicide is where?

Dr. SHAW. The herbicide is in here. There is no drift, no volatility, and there is no contamination of farm workers. Farm workers

are not exposed to this. There are no residues to hit the soil. There are no vapors released from the rope wick applicator.

Mr. MYERS. What about the soybeans that get caught?

Dr. SHAW. Soybeans do not get caught in the rope wick. You have to have the applicator above the soybeans. There is no drip. So, there-let me show you something else.

If you imagine——

Mr. MYERS. You could not do that if you are going to drill unless you get a terribly narrow tractor.

Dr. SHAW. You can go between the rows. These are now shaped like sweeps. They are put on the back and are shaped like a cultivator.

We have other devices here that show how you can handle it. But this gives you a good idea.

Mr. MYERS. I am concerned about what you are doing to help farmers.

Dr. SHAW. Last year by using this device on 20 million acres we saved the farmers of this country $100 million. In addition to that, the yield increases-much of it in soybeans-amounted to $500 million. I want to tell you that this savings is greater than the entire budget that Dr. Bertrand is asking for SEA Agricultural Research.

But the $100 million we saved is greater than all the money ever appropriated by the U.S. Congress for weed research. We saved it in one year.

Mr. MYERS. That is pretty cost-effective. [Laughter.]

Dr. SHAW. Right now we want to make a national commitment to shape this device so we can use insecticides in here. We want to learn how to use fungicides and growth regulators.

This is a very cost-benefit type of approach to delivery of chemicals. You keep them on the weeds or target pests.

Mr. MYERS. Those are the horse weeds and the cockle burrs that grow.

Dr. SHAW. This is a very cost-benefit type of approach to delivery of chemicals. You keep them off the plant and on the weeds. The herbicide we use is non-selective. It will kill anything that it touches. So we have to keep it above the crop.

We feel there are other opportunities for using this device. We spent $100,000 developing this device. We developed it in two years. We have a patent on it. The Monsanto Chemical Company is spending $500,000 this year to develop a new rope that they designed that is more efficient and also devices that effectively seal the outlets of the boom. They are providing this to 108,000 farmers who have bought the device. They are furnishing it at no cost to them this year in an effort to increase the effectiveness.

Mr. WATKINS. Would you yield?

Dr. SHAW. Certainly.

Mr. WATKINS. Are you able to use this before they go to seed so you will have a lot more effect and next year have fewer weeds? Dr. SHAW. That is right.

We have beautiful experiments-in Indiana and in Illinois-in which we show if we prevent these weed seeds from being produced and recycled, after three years to six years we can greatly reduce this weed population in the soil.

We have run those experiments in Illinois. This is the sixteenth year. We have pretty good evidence of what we can do.

Mr. MYERS. It is called a rope wick applicator? My dad invented one years ago. They called it a hoe. It was slower, but it worked. [Laughter.]

Dr. SHAW. There are hundreds of different configurations.

OTHER HERBICIDE RESEARCH

Mr. MYERS. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Another problem we have in the river bottom area is floods. What happens out our way is that we have to apply chemicals, herbicides, insecticides and everything else. But the herbicides we have to apply on the river bottom to kill the cockle burrs. If you have a flood in June, it is too late to plant corn and you have already applied the herbicide and you cannot put soybeans in. Do we have something now to kill only cockle burrs and morning glories and all those things and still plant soybeans? That is a very bad problem.

Dr. BERTRAND. Mr. Myers, what Mr. Shaw has shown you is just one of our efforts to meet the needs of the farmer. We do have an ongoing program of research in cooperation with industry to find more selective herbicides.

Mr. MYERS. That is my next question.

This morning, in the other Committee that Mrs. Smith and I serve, along with the Chairman, we found that in the Department of Energy under the new Administration we are going to have less federally financed demonstrations and more will be handed over to industry to start building the pilots and building the programs. Is that true also in agriculture?

RESEARCH ON MIREX

Will we be turning this over sooner to industry? Will we still have to go through the procedure of getting them cleared? Whatever happened to mirex, too? Did we find out?

Dr. BERTRAND. We have the answer on mirex when we get to that point. Would you like that now?

Dr. Fertig has returned from his inquiry and has the answer on mirex.

Dr. Fertig?

Dr. FERTIG. After 16 phone calls to EPA, I understand from EPA at this moment there was a 1980 request for emergency exemption for mirex which was disallowed by EPA.

Mr. MYERS. Exemption from what?

Dr. FERTIG. Emergency exemption to use it on fireants.

Mr. MYERS. Was it ever restricted? The question was: Was it actually restricted?

Dr. FERTIG. All the uses of mirex were cancelled. But then an emergency exemption was requested to allow it to be used this past year. EPA disallowed that emergency exemption to use mirex. Now on ferriamicide, there was an emergency exemption also requested, which EPA approved for use on the fireant. But about the time they started to use it down in Mississippi, some data came in apparently from Canada indicating there might be some prob

lem of concern. EPA called down and stopped the program to give them time to study the data.

It is my understanding that it took them two months to review the data and by that time the emergency exemption ran out, so there was no use of that compound either.

PURPOSE OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

Mr. MYERS. I am concerned that we are losing sight of our purpose. Are we really helping agriculture? Are we helping the farmer to produce a crop out there as cheaply as possible so that we as consumers can eat as cheaply as possible?

Sometimes I get the feeling that we have lost sight of our purpose in Government, particularly in the Department of Agriculture, that we really are not helping farmers as much as we are doing all these other side issues.

We hear about the fireant coming north. Let us leave him down. south. I remember many years ago when I was at Fort Benning, Georgia. They were spraying for the fireant back then. I guess he is still there.

Dr. BERTRAND. We are definitely getting back to the basics to helping the farmer. As I indicated in my opening remarks, both the 1981 budget that we presented, and the 1982 budget, have the principal thrust of helping to improve productivity. That is our problem in this country. Our productivity has slipped. We must tailor our research to meet the needs of the farmer. We are very mindful of that.

BIOCONTROL LABORATORY

Mr. MYERS. In closing, on page 3, when I see the additions, it bothers me to see some of these figures, like $1.9 million to construct that biocontrol laboratory in Europe and $15.2 million for increased operating costs.

All those things are not really helping farmers.

Dr. BERTRAND. Mr. Myers, that biocontrol laboratory in Europe is essential to be a point from which we can introduce biological control organisms which will save the farmers millions of dollars. each year.

Mr. MYERS. Are we exporting our problems?

Dr. BERTRAND. No, sir. We bring organisms in that permit us to use less chemicals by controlling the insects biologically. That laboratory is essential for maintenance of that introductory program. It definitely will help the farmers.

The increased operating costs-that is just to meet inflation. Mr. MYERS. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TRAXLER. Next we have the very distinguished gentleman from Texas.

RESEARCH ON GYPSY MOTH

Mr. HIGHTOWER. Dr. Bertrand, a few moments ago one of your associates described the gypsy moth research as successful. Has that successful research been translated into any identifiable results?

Dr. BERTRAND. Earlier this afternoon I admitted that I did not come prepared to describe the gypsy moth program. May I ask if any of the staff here has information?

Mr. HIGHTOWER. May I just direct my question to the gentleman who described it as successful?

Dr. KLASSEN. The applications which have been made are, of course, being made by various action agencies, such as APHIS, FS, and the state departments of agriculture and state departments of natural resources.

One application of our research is in the detection and delimitation of gypsy moth populations. We find gypsy moths hitchhiking all the way to California, to the State of Washington, to various other non-infested states. APHIS has something like 90,000 traps employed and they are able to quickly detect the incipient infestations of the pest and to eliminate it at that spot.

Mr. HIGHTOWER. Is that the result of your research?

Dr. KLASSEN. Yes, there are other results, too, such as the application of the virus which is just beginning now and the baccillus thuriengensis

Mr. HIGHTOWER. Then there is not just one particular breakthrough that offers any possibility of some dramatic work so far as the gypsy moth is concerned? But you have been able to accomplish several different things with the research? Is that what you are saying?

Dr. KLASSEN. Yes. The Department is attempting to put together a comprehensive program to deal with the problem in all of its facets. Not all of the research is done that is needed to accomplish these objectives. But we have made a good deal of progress.

[Additional information follows:]

There are three major facets to the gypsy moth problem. First, to keep the pest suppressed below tolerable levels in areas where it is firmly established. Secondly, to develop technology to retard the expansion of the geographic range of the major infestation in the Northeastern states. Thirdly, to completely eliminate incipient infestation in states where the pest is not firmly established.

Mr. HIGHTOWER. I did not want you to miss an opportunity to brag about successful research and what it had accomplished. I want to find out if there had been enough time or if the research is such that it could be called successful.

Thank you very much.

GUAR RESEARCH

Dr. Bertrand, how many people in the USDA do we have doing research on guar?

Dr. BERTRAND. I believe we have closed out all of that work now. Mr. HIGHTOWER. The only work that I knew anything about was at the Texas A&M Research and Extension Center at Chillicothe in my district.

On February 23rd it was announced in the local paper that the research was being halted and the guar researcher was being transferred to Amarillo to work with sunflowers.

Do we have any people involved in sunflower research?

Dr. BERTRAND. Yes, sir, we do.

Mr. HIGHTOWER. How many? More than one?

Dr. BERTRAND. I do not have that.