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our agricultural production.” The 7th District Congressman, representing Virginia’s major fruit production area, spoke at the annual meeting of the Virginia State Horticultural Society at Hotel Roanoke. “The American farmer finds himself caught on the anvil of declining prices for the things he produces, and, secondly, hammered by rising %psts of all the things that he buys,” Marsh noted, adding;
“It is high time that we recognize that the production of food and fiber is a vital part of a modern industrial society, and that farmingcannot be isolated from other elements of the economy. Our place of world preeminence can be traced directly to our ability to free people from the land in order to work on the assembly line in the plant and in the office. Our continued growth and progress still will be determined in the long run by our food production capabilities. If our agricultural output should ever slacken or fail to keep pace with our other growth, the wheels of American progress would grind to a halt.”
In recommending what agricultural producers should do, Marsh said that greater effort should be made “to impress on legislators, business and industrial leaders and those not directly associated with agricultural areas and theagri cultural process the need to have a greater appreciation of the part that food and fiber, play in their own economic well-being.”
“A failure thus tar by many in executive and legislative posts in government, in industry and in labor to know something about the agricultural process and farm problems leads to unrealistic demands, frequently resulting in legislation that is selfdefeating for those who propose it, he said.
“The American workingman has a great stake in farm economy’s ability to produce foodstuffs for the table at reasonable prices,“Marsh said.
Turning to specific problems of orchardists, he said that “ingenuity in harvesting the crop is going to be the key to profitable orchard operations ifor the future, because there
.is little prospei§Eof acontirtiJ11 ing supply of Skilled harvest labor at reasonable rates.”
“I need not recall the experiences of recent years, in which orchardists repeatedly have been kept on the hook for months in the matter of authorizations for imported harvest labor,” Marsh said, “and 1 see little prospect of a marked change in attitude in the Executive Branch, or in Congress as a whole.”
“If, as many believe, it is economically impractical to develop a professional mobile
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