recommendations for farm legislation by starting hearings this week

recommendations for farm legislation by starting hearings this week with Secreatary of Agriculture Benson as the first witness called. But, here again, the road to agreement on specific changes in existing laws appeared to be a rocky one, with membres of the President’s own party immediately indicating their lack of agreement either with him or with each Other. When I addressed several farm groups in Virginia last Fall I pointed out that in spite •f all that has been done to allow fanners to obtain so-called “parity prices, their income level never has been as high as the average for the nation as a whole. Last year, for example, the 20 percent of our population which is directly dependent on agriculture, received only 6.3 percent of the total national income. Since the individual farmer has less control over the prices he receives than producers of most commodities, and the production of food and fibre is so essential to the natoinal health and security, it is a proper function of the Government to help stabilize farm prices—a type of help rendered industry by the Government through tariff laws for the past 125 years. The toughest problem, of course, is to balnce production among crops and to dispose of the surpluses which,, as I predicted last Fall, are reaching the point whre the President must ask for more money for the Commodity Credit Corporation to handle them under existing law. I have frequently suggested that we need to find a way to get our surpluses to that large proportion of the world’s population which goes to bed hungry every night and I was pleased, therefore, by the President’s promise to ask for adequate funds to strengthen the work of the Agriculture Department in developing markets at home and abroad and for legislation to reduce tariff barriers.