NFO-176 (AV10675): Rural America

I am Ed Wimmer public relations director of the National Federation of Independent Business well welcoming you to us farm forum [music] us farm report a public information program brought to you in the interest of agriculture rural business and the well-being of our nation by the members of the national farmers organization in this area and others interested in having American agriculture receive a cost of production plus a reasonable profit the American farmers and ranchers are building a brighter future for agriculture through the national farmers organization the organization that awoke America and represents the leadership in agriculture u.s. farm report features a special guest mr. ed Wimmer public relations director for the National Federation of Independent Business Men which has over two hundred and forty thousand member Main Street merchants to visit with mr. Wimmer will be Ray J Anderson NFO member from Detroit Lakes Minnesota mrs. Willis McElwain seventh District NFO Public Relation chairwoman from Graceville Minnesota and Arnold Thompson Kitson county NFO publicity chairman Donaldson Minnesota now to direct the questioning is Ray Anderson mr. Wimmer a spokesman for the independent businessman of America I would like to have you tell me how you feel about the lack of purchasing power is caused by low farm prices and what the correlation between this is and the small-town businessman well of course as representing so many small businesses and so many of them going out of business today particularly in our rural areas we feel that if the family farm isn't brought back into the picture and if he hasn't given a profit for what he produces as NFO is seeking to do in their collective bargaining that we are going to lose a lot more members among the independent businessmen and the bankers that we are now losing and we go into some of our rural communities where we had as many as maybe 200 members or 50 or 40 members in our men report at the end of each year reduction of from 10 to 20 to 30 percent in the number that are in business well I can say with authority that rural America is in a pretty bad spot and when the farmer is in a bad spot so is the independent merchant and all of his suppliers whether there but principally the wholesalers and the jabbers the brokers and the retailers and that sort of thing we have members in our organization of all kinds of both business and professionals so we feel it probably a lot more than we would than just answering your question as far as the independent retail Merchants are concerned Thank You Ed Mrs. McElwain there have been various Commission's blue-ribbon Commission's food and fiber Commission's CD reports and so forth now normally I would feel that if we wanted a diagnosis of a medical situation we would involve doctors if we wanted a legal clarification we would ask lawyers do you feel that this same pattern has been followed in analyzing agriculture mrs. McElwain no I'm afraid not it kind of brings to mind you say the word diagnosis I believe we have so many fragmented experts working on the body no one has looked yet to see if he's still living we have very many people who have made comments to the effect that agriculture must still continue to shift resources from manpower to more capital and yet more capital simply is not available to the farmer unless it is through borrowed capital and of course this can only last just so long I have had the opportunity to speak with three members of the food and fiber Commission that made their report late last summer and the question I put to them was this two million farmers could be absorbed into the metropolitan areas and not easily perhaps but they could be absorbed if these were the only people who are moving but with two million farmers leaving the land you then are moving besides the two million farmers his family and then the businessmen who would be serving this person I asked them what did they think would happen to a large exodus of people which would maybe come closer to 30 million people when they had to be absorbed into the metropolitan areas the first two that I asked this of gave me no answer at all the third one was mr. Roscoe Haney who spoke at the Minneapolis Farm forum early this spring and his reply was that he felt that farm decline versus a rural area decline was due more to ease of transportation than the fact that we had a declining number of farmers I was most surprised at this because we haven't just recently gotten the car or the truck or the railroad if this were the case I think that the decline of farm families in the rural areas and businessmen would have started taking place a long time ago this didn't come into the picture until farmers were grossly mis- unpaid so this bothers me these people to me have a great blind spot mr. Wimmer and you seem to get this kind of reaction yourself what do you think well we we try to look at this thing from a much broader front than probably just the farm front for example a society is only as free as the number of independent units that is operating within the society whether it is independent farmers independent businessmen independent professional people or whether it's young people striking out on their own on the farm or in the avenues of business now you can't hurt any one segment of our society you can't hurt the independent retailer badly without hurting the wholesalers the jobbers the brokers and small manufacturers and the big manufacturers and the rural area now you say that same thing goes for the family farm you can't harm the family farm without harming every single segment of our society whether it is banks or or whether it is the children growing up that are that are need education and everything now I find as I get around the country these past few months especially since NFO had this tremendous rally of 35,000 in Des Moines Iowa and I was a speaker at that convention and I saw these people arriving in school buses and in every kind of a conveyance and getting off there at Des Moines and that at that great convention and they were there weren't any banquets there wasn't any entertainment they came from all over and they left there that their land at the time when they should have been doing something about their crops they listened to five-hour speeches they got back on their buses and in their school buses and cars and headed back for home now I felt that the 35,000 turnout that time of dub of n fo was the first real evidence that we had an honest-to-goodness fight going to save the family farm in America and of course as a spokesman for for the independent businesses and professional men and always including the family farm in all of my speeches this generated my batteries to such an extent that I've been talking to farm organizations every week since the NFO meeting in Des Moines and even though there is still a great amount of defeatism in in agriculture and among the businessmen that we're not going to get out of this thing that defeatism is being lessened I am positive every day and the communications between the farmer and the independent businessman in all businesses in fact and the communications between the family farm I think and the people in the town has been improved probably a thousand percent since that meeting in Des Moines and the big rally in in Louisville yes Ed thanks I spent considerable time last February out in western states organizing new area for NFO and I found also that there was a considerable interest not just on the part of farmers but on the part of businessmen newspaperman and others in the small towns to learn what this program is about Arnold Thompson would you comment on the urgency of this and the feeling of people towards this program well I'm real happy for dedicated men like ed Wimmer that has come in to help in this organization some farmers still use this old gag of I'm going to wait and see if it works now if everybody waited to see if it would work would anything be accomplished in any field we lose a farmer every five minutes day and night around the clock this is urgent I'd ask non-members this question what assurance do you have the dedicated NFO members and dedicated men like mr. Wimmer mr. Paulson and others will still be carrying your battle and I said your battle even a year from now now if you're not willing to get in and partially carry the load now what would you do if the entire load was dumped on your shoulders now we're not asking you to dump your present farm organization we're asking you to keep that keep your membership in your present organization but join the NFO and work with us think carefully on this we're anti no one we're just asking you to get in and fight to save what is left of rural America we have a legitimate cause Thank You Ed now there are those who like to think big and we must all do that but the newest in the biggest thinking comes on talking of production units instead of farms a economist from one of our universities in the Upper Midwest predicted some time ago that 50 to 100,000 production units could feed this country or produce 80 to 90 percent of our food and fiber let's average this out and save 50 thousand in the 50 states this would leave 1000 per state and in the state where I come from would amount to about 12 farmers per county you can see what this would do to rural America mrs. McElwain would you like to add any comment to this yes I think that perhaps a quote from the forward in the last publication food costs and farm prices which is put out by the committee of Agriculture and the House of Representatives in July 1967 would probably answer this about as well as anything possibly for great farming corporations might well be able to produce all the food and fiber we need but they would certainly never do it for anything like the small percent of the consumers disposable income which between three and four million farmers are now getting therefore it is important for city people to understand that all of us will suffer if we fail to appreciate the work the problems and the needs of agriculture we need to pay our farmers enough to make it possible for them to feed and clothe our cities so I think that and this is signed in by WR Poe the chairman I would like to ask mr. Wimmer if this doesn't open up another vein of thought that we need to be very much concerned with and that is to have the consumer relate or identify to the so-called farm problem which is really a national problem and has been misnomered well I I'd like to answer that in a little bit different way than probably you have brought the question up I've had great confidence in the sportsmanship and excuse me in the fairness of the American people they won't stand for any unfairness in sports any kind of a game at all part some of our rat are things like wrestling for example has gone way down because of the fact that it doesn't have any rules and if the marketplace that doesn't have any rules of fair play and the consumer continues to to accept it and to be willing to not do anything about it in fact even the proof of it if they think they're saving some money this is the feeling that they have toward the consuming public I don't believe that this is true I think that when the people find out and understand that we are operating and supposed to be a nation of profit we're a profit economy that if a businessman doesn't make a property isn't going to be able to improve his place of business he can't contribute to the various activities that is going on in his community and he doesn't pay any taxes now the farmer is the only producer that there is in the United States today that everybody tells him what they're going to pay where the and and and he brings his products to town or what does he find yet in Easter and the Christmas and New Year's he finds the big chains and discounters using turkeys as baits and he finds that monopoly is is rising up on all hands to direct the buying of his beef and- and buying of pork and the controlling of egg prices and everything and I feel but one of the things we've got to have and we've been talking about this for so many years and it's just now beginning to crystallize in Congress and that is that no farm products should be used as a consistent bait we used to have small chicken farms every direction that you'd look you'd find a small chicken farm and how many people today are members of Congress they're in the Supreme Court even and they're in all high offices all over the country that were educated on the earnings of a family farm well today you couldn't put a boy through kindergarten or a girl through kindergarten on the earnings of the average family farm now if we're going to be a profit country certainly this the principle segment of our economy which is which is agriculture if it is operating at a loss the whole country is going to operate at loss and all these taxes that we're paying and the debts that we're building up and the crazy civil rights riots and all that sort of thing I think it is all related to the breakdown of Agriculture and my feeling is that when the man on the farm is sick the man on Main streets going to be sick the man in Wall Street's going to be sick and the man on Constitution Avenue is going to be particularly sick if this agricultural question isn't solved Thank You ed and I agree with you and I would like to add a little to this about two years ago I was down in Venezuela one of six American farmers that spent six weeks in that fine country they told us many times that their farm problem was a social problem and this is just what you have referred to now in Venezuela they told us also that they went from a dictatorship to a republican form of government similar to ours via the ballot box and this was accomplished on the promise of agrarian land reform which they have carried out they started with the import of feudal system of Europe we started with the homestead system in the United States which was the small farmer proving up on the tract of land in the past two years I have been fortunate in having a group of Venezuelan people come back and repay the visits that we made down there and I want to read what the group report said about the family farm we suspect that the greatness of this country stems in part from the farm family nucleus we're in the joint efforts of the mother for the father and the sons have established this group within the middle class this is the very grassroots then of our democracy and it was wonderful to me to realize the inside of these people that could come here and spend the month and figure it out but a lot of people in leadership in this country apparently can't see missus McElwain I would like to ask you if you have as a shopper for the family noted the ups and downs of farm prices are they reflected in the food prices no I don't feel they have been I know there are times when we have sold cattle sold pigs on the market and our price would be down but it wouldn't be down in the stores I am told that there is such a thing as consumer resistance and when you are acclimated or a use to a certain price range that this is right where they tried to keep it you see if they would drop the price down to reflect the lower prices at farm level they might incur some resistance when they would raise it again I think that this in part is part of the answer I think that the farm income itself as you look at it from a gross national point of view as ours has decreased the cost of food in an overall say as you take it through the checkout stand it continues to rise now food cost was the only item in the cost-of-living index in 1967 which decreased the other things such as doctor bills cars well any other item has gone up but the food cost decreased so therefore the family farmer was subsidizing to an extent the consumers when they buy their food I think that it is something that will have to be corrected if the people want to continue to have an ample food supply at a reasonable cost as it has been in the past you can't have one industry forever taking the shock and not having this finally collapse I wish that there were some investigations to find out why some of these trends and why some of these things develop as they do it seems like it is very hard to make people understand that in reality farm prices are done in reverse because of the huge volume chain stores handle about 25 top chains handle about 85% of the food in this country therefore their volume buying they may dictate what they will pay and on the other end the consumer pays what the price tag is I part can I interrupt your ray yes I'd partly agree with what you said about the lower costs there the lower prices that the farmer get not being reflected in the grocery basket but a lot of this is due to the monopolistic conditions what you're talking about like for instance eight chains buying 50% of the of the beef for example in the United States all of these have their effects but I was in a meat packers place of business recently and he surprised me by saying because I hadn't heard the way he had put it before and he said that if the farmer hadn't subsidized the consuming public for the last several years with all of the low income that he has gotten if he hadn't subsidized the general public that the riots in the ghettos would have been much worse than than they are now now I do believe that this low farm income has had it's over a certain reflection in in prices now there are areas where some of the giant businesses particularly had profited tremendously from the from the farm losses and a lot of these people that don't understand this thing for instance they're independent merchants it wasn't agonistic to the farmer and the farmer isn't agonistic to the independent merchant neither when I'm stopped to realize that here they were both in a community that all the salesmen wholesaler jobbers brokers and the people that are selling the equipment dealers for example all have to come out to all of these rural towns to do this selling to these to these merchants and to these farmers if there is a half a dozen great big farms around any kind of an area at all there's nobody comes to that that town to sell them anything most of them buy direct where the family farm has to have personal contacts in the independent merchant has to have personal contacts the big manufacturers the little manufacturers so are really our entire economy to me is it's like the farmers like a hub or the independent merchants like the hub of a wheel all the spokes are all of these other suppliers and small businessman and the workers and the factories and the workers on the farms and everything take away the independent farmer and you take away the independent merchants and then you take away the independent bank you have nothing left of democracy at all and this to me is the big issue that the people should be thinking about and as I said before I just don't believe that the mothers of America want to see these fine boys brought to the cities and only one out of every ten that are now on the farms will be on the farms in nineteen seventy one if this thing continues and I don't think that the mothers of America want to see their boys standing with their hat in their hand with no place to go except the great big labor union or a great big government or great big giant business in order to find a place for their future so this this fight to save the family farm is not a fight of the family farmer it's part of his fight and he's very and he's the one that is most vitally affected but this is a battle to save the American heritage in my opinion yes I believe you're right ed I ran into a situation out west last February where a businessman suggested that if the price of wheat were to double it would mean that the price of a loaf of bread would have to go up double I asked him if he subscribed also then that if we gave the wheat away he would get the price the loaf of bread free at the store then he saw the fallacy of his thinking it would change to the slope of bread about 3 cents either way if we double the price of wheat it would increase from the standpoint of the cost of the ingredient 3 cents a loaf if we gave the wheat it would drop the price 3 cents a loaf Arnold as a a supplier of the funds for your wife's shopping why how would you feel about this subject we've all covered it and I think you should well we recently had a display in a hobby show that fit very well with what you said we had a package of puffed wheat on display there that puffed wheat that retail brought in or cost the consumer sixty one dollars and forty four cents the farmer got paid a dollar and a half for that wheat there is absolutely no comparison between what the farmer gets and what the consumer pays I'd also like to mention at this point in regards to prices at the store some time ago there was a holding action on milk the farmer was asking for two cents a quart for his milk well since that time of course milk has gone up several cents a quart which proves the course that the price was justified it also proves that the consumer would pay the price the question I'd like to ask who got the additional money I know that the farmer didn't and again when you go to the store and you ask about these prices quite often the they are told that it's the farmer that's causing these things now this is very very unfair Thank You Arnold there is a face in the scripture that tells us that every laborer is worthy of his hire and while society has been taught to bless the Lord for the crops that he provides for our use it seems society has never learned the transgression of this divine law that occurs when they undervalue the large blessing in the marketplace we have often been told that we should be businessmen and I would like your feelings on this Arnold this is a very good point because this is one that is pushed at us so often be a good businessman did you ever hear of a business that opened up his store and said come in here shop in my store I'm not putting any prices on just pay what you wish just how long do you think that that merchants would be in business what do you in business overnight and still we as farmers are expected to accept those prices for what we have to sell remember we have a cost on our production remember farmers are consumers also the greatest of all consumers we're concerned about the cost of the product also well thanks ed now it leaves a question of who is going to raise the food in the future when your youngsters plan their future don't they look for a field of endeavor that they feel that they can enjoy working at but yet one that must provide a decent standard of living for them the question then boils down to where are they going to find their opportunities in the jungles for 70% of the people live on a little over 1% of the land or in the healthy climate of rural America mr. Wimmer would you like to make any closing remarks here well I'd I'd like to just comment a little bit on what Arnold said and you've been calling him ed during this program here so we don't want to confuse the audience too much for example we had 12,000 independent dairies not too many years ago today we got about 750 now when the increase in the milk came up this time before the dairyman was going broke hey he couldn't pay his taxes he couldn't meet the Union demand so this increase didn't give him a single penny of extra profit all it did was to save him just a little bit longer until the next milk war or something now when the when the independent businessman he feels he has nobody to fight except the small farmer he can't fight the big the big corporation and the small farmer feels like he's had a fight the small businessman because he can't fight that fight the great big monopolies this thing has all got to be turned around in my estimation and the doctor for example he didn't have anybody supporting him now he's in socialized medicine up to his neck if he'd had more public relations like NFO is trying to do among the farmers and among the people the doctor wouldn't be up to his neck in socialized medicine so agriculture I think depends a great deal on what your organization is doing to carry on this fight and I compliment you tremendously don't you think that the farmer and the labor man has a great deal in common regardless of what they say to the officer I think everybody in this audience has got a stake in what we're doing today well well sincere thanks to the members of the panel and to all fine people out in TV land for tuning in our US farm report and for a closing statement I would like to provide you that the so-called farm problem is a far reaching social problem affecting us all we urge you to help solve it by supporting the efforts of NFO to get an equitable return in agriculture and keeping the wrists of democracy the family farm strong remember what is good for the farmers is good for industry for labor and for everyone we are all part of the united states of America united we stand divided we fail [music] us farm report as presented as a special guest mr. ed Wimmer public relations director for the National Federation of Independent Business men from Covington Kentucky the panelists were Ray J Anderson mrs. Willis McElwain and Arnold Thompson NFO members from the state of Minnesota members the National Farmers Organization invite you to tune in again next week at the same time for more facts on agriculture and rural America which is the gear wheel in our economy that produces the majority of our nation's new wealth a farm income pattern set the nation's prosperity in the national farmers organization represents new thinking in a new generation of agricultural producers [music]