statement and I'm delighted that you could be here. I think we see both ends of the spectrum here. That's awfully good. Thank you all very much.

Are there any others who have not testified that would like to testify or would like to insert something in the record?

Let me say this. We will have a few days and if you think of something you think would be important that you would like to have in the record, we would like to do it and-Mr. Brown, do you want to testify?

STATEMENT OF EDWARD BROWN, BOWLING GREEN, KY.

Mr. BROWN. You know I was raised on blackeyed peas and I've eaten the dried peaches and I wonder if Califano and Kennedy have ever done anything like that. I think maybe the thing is, that we are not only tobacco farmers; we are food growers; and I think we're missing that. If we grow tobacco that's kind of a backup crop for us. We are not only tobacco growers; we are food growers.

You take the tobacco crop away from us, then we couldn't grow the food because it's a backup crop. You take anywhere in Warren County, a man may have a few cattle and he may have a few acres of corn and a few acres of soybeans and a few hundred pounds of tobacco, but its his tobacco that he's dependent on, but he's still using his tobacco as his backup crop and I think the only thing I have to say is I'm real proud of you and I'm proud we have still got some commonsense people representing Kentucky in Washington and being in the legislature for 12 years I know what you're going through with these committees and these hearings and the spot that you're on, and I'm grateful to you and your committee and to Dee and Bill Natcher and the people that came here today.

You know, earlier this morning I saw some people in the back, Senator, that had on their work clothes and had stooped shoulders and I know they were farmers and they went out early this morning to see that their tobacco was in order and I'm sure they left people there to handle it, but they left early because they had to get back to see that the people got the tobacco down so they could strip it. It just makes me feel good to see people come out here to pay their respects to you because you came out here trying to represent us in Washington and our State delegation here, our representatives and the farmers in the area. It just makes me feel good.

And if the "C" in Califano started with a "K," we'd call it the "KK" boys, "Kill Kentucky," and I think that's what they want to do. You don't have to worry about this Commonwealth and this country when you've got young boys like that boy that came up here.

Senator FORD. Well, we'll pass the plate now after that sermon. I'm delighted to see all of vou and if there are others here who want to make a statement we will just keep continuing. That's why we're here. We want to hear you. Be sure and give your name and address for the stenographer.

STATEMENT OF GARY HUNT, KENTUCKY

Mr. HUNT. I'm Gary Hunt. I'm the son of the last one that spoke a few moments ago and I'm going to give more of a history than anything. I raised my first tobacco crop when I was 14. Dad always had

to do the market in Florida and Georgia and he'd leave about the middle of July. The two older brothers and myself-and he always told us, "I don't mind if you use my equipment and stuff if you want to raise some tobacco out on the other farms," and what we would do, we would take over dad's tobacco crop when he'd left and finish it up and get it in the barn and so forth and then we had our own tobacco crop to kind of give us a little bit of incentive, a whole lot of incentive. Well, I started at Western when I was 18 and I continued to raise tobacco. In 1968-the reason I remember was my first child was born the same week I bought a John Deere tractor for $3,400, and I hadI think I took the John Deere tractor-it was small enough to cultivate and pull wagons and sit in the back and everything, but it was still big enough to count as a general use for hauling things and this type of thing. I took that tractor and a 4-year-old wagon and I got an old plugged colored fellow-I guess he was about 65-and there were 5 or 6 years in a row I raised about 15 acres of tobacco with virtually a $4,000 investment, and by plowing these profits back in, I managed to buy a 50-acre farm and eventually I got it paid off over a period of time and then this tobacco thing-what I was trying to come up with is an investment where you can raise tobacco, which is not prohibitive, to get into farming. That's what I'm trying to come up with.

I don't see how a fellow can start off on his own. I can see how in partnership with your father or something you can work a grain farm and do all right, but it's the unusual operator that can start from scratch and get into grain farming at today's land cost. It can be done but it's the unusual fellow that's really got the knack for the grain farming. But the tobacco, with the know-how and not being scared of work, a fellow can get a toehold in farming and I can testify to that because I feel that's how I got my toehold, was in tobacco.

I have expanded now and I've got a bigger farm and I still raise. tobacco. I figure the tobacco is what's going to make the farm payment the first of January. That's what I look for to make that payment. There's a certain amount of security in it. You can figure that the price for tobacco will be there. When you raise corn or soybeans or what not you get a reasonable amount of doubt whether the market is going to be there when you've got your crop to sell, and now that I have a toehold in farming I don't feel the tobacco is as critical to me as it has been in the past 10 years, but I'm going to continue raising enough tobacco to make that farm payment.

I'm going to say here I've got an a number of dollars I need to generate some other crop. All right. Then I expand my cattle herd or I expand the hog herd. What am I doing. I'm increasing the supply in other crops and if the tobacco thing was tapered down, say there was a 30-percent cut on the amount of tobacco we could raise, these fellows that are farming, they're going to start looking for other areas to supplement that lost income. They're going to add more sows. They're going to add more cows. They're going to start milking a few more. They're going to do something to pick up the lost slack and then you're going to see surpluses even more than we have now.

If we've got a surplus of corn, you're going to have more surplus. If you've got a surplus of milk, the Government is wondering what they're going to do with, this is just going to add to it.

I can give you an example on these alternating crops. I have raised cabbage 3 years. The first year I raised it, there were three collage

producers in Warren County. Well, my wife and I-I guess more than anything else from the pride of not wanting to lose any moneywe tried to eliminate any extra labor. Cabbage was coming off in late June and July where we could do a lot of the work ourselves. We worked our tail ends off to break even on the cabbage, more than anything else to kind of save face. I thought the first year—I've got to count 1 year up to experience.

Well, the second year there were two cabbage producers, myself and another producer. We didn't do anything outstanding, but we made enough money. There was potential in this. The third year, this past year, the cabbage made a real good return. I felt like it was well worth the effort I put into it this year but the thing that made it profitable this year was there was only one producer. The other two fellows threw up their hands and got out of it.

I could see with tobacco getting phased out you're going to see people saying, "Hey, what is it I need to replace this tobacco income with?" They're going to say, "Here's good old Gary over here raising this cabbage, and it seems like he must be doing good or he would have quit." The next year, instead of me having the Warren County market to myself, how many other tobacco farmers are going to be jumping in?

Senator FORD. By your statement today, you may have some competition next year, too.

Mr. HUNT. Well, I tell you, if you make it through that first year when you don't make any money and you hang in there-when a fellow loses the income in one year, he's going to-maybe some people are going to say he's going to get out. I know in the case of a fellow who's really a true farmer and getting a toehold, he's going to start looking for alternate ways of income, and the more people there are out there looking for ways of income, you're going to have that much more production in other crops.

Senator FORD. Thank you very much, Gary. I think you're a living example of the capital investment and capital gains that we've been talking about.

So, without further ado, this hearing is adjourned. I want to thank each and every one of you again for your help and support and effort, and I want to thank the staff for all their good work. I particularly want to thank the university here from the president on down, or however you want to look at it, for their hospitality in allowing us to use this room. It's been adequate and it's served our purpose, and we are very grateful for their usual hospitality. Thank you all very much. [Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]

Re Year Older 3r1 18s letter, to me briting met testly, onering 8. 3118 (the non King Determine Act of 1978, at the dktiker Lönd bearing bed by the Consumer Sabommittee of the Secate Commitee on Oezet Szen and Transportation, which hearing was bell in the sulla rium of the Celale of Agriniture on the University of Kelday anpas

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Consumer subcommittee.

Diricien Senate Offer Building,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR SENATOR FORD: At the time the above referenced bearing was held. I was out of the state and, therefore, unable to testify. Unfortunately, your above referenced letter was mislaid and I was consequently unaware of the hearing until after I had already made the irreversibie plans for going out of the state. I sincerely apologize for this and want you to know that I appreciate your inviting me to testify.

Ms. Any Bondurant kindly advised my secretary that, due to my being unshe to personally testify. I might submit a written statement regarding the abore referenced bill. I would like this letter to also serve as that written statement. I do not feel that I can effectively enlarge upon the testimony that was given at the hearing. Having been made aware of the content of said testimony. I must say, without qualification, that I agree with the arguments and sentiments expressed by those opposed to the passage of S. 3118. I strongly oppose this legislation. Any efforts you might make, to prevent passage of same, would be appre ciated.

Thanking you, once again, for inviting me to comment, I remain
Sincerely yours,

THE TOBACCO DILEMMA

(By Wendell Berry)

ROBERT B. BEGLEY. Chairman of the Board,

For anyone who wishes to see the small farm survive and thrive, the case of the small tobacco farmers is as intricate and troubling as any you can find. Tobacco has become an easy crop to dislike. It is an unnecessary product, unhealthy to use. But does that require us to dislike the people who grow it? I don't think so. It may seem easy for me to say that, because I live among people who grow tobacco, and I have a small income from it myself, Living so near the crop, however, does give one a sufficiently complex awareness of its human importance. People who don't live in tobacco country, it seems to me, are finding it too easy to condemn the producers with the product.

As an example of what I mean, consider a "solution" to the tobacco problem that a task force recently proposed to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal of Nov. 2, 1977, this task force, headed by the Surgeon General, proposed to repeal the Federal price support program for tobacco and to replace it with a “direct social welfare program for small tobacco growers to ease their losses in transition from a subsidized to a free market system, including funds for re-education.” Among other things this program would provide the impoverished growers with food stamps. The "re-education" would presumably be a part of an effort, subsidized by Federal loans, to prepare farmers to grow other crops.

This proposal, of course, was made in the name of health; it is a part of the anti-smoking campaign. But we should recall that NO public proposal is ever

made except in the name of some worthy cause. In fact, this one can have no effect whatever on health problems related to smoking, but would do incalculable damage to the health of families and communities in several states.

One should note, to begin with, that the Surgeon General and his colleagues do NOT propose to outlaw the growing and marketing of tobacco-much less the manufacture and use of tobacco products. They propose only to eliminate the price support program. If this should be done the tobacco industry would continue as before; smokers would continue to smoke as before; the relation of tobacco to health would remain exactly the same. The only difference would be that small farmers would be quickly priced off the tobacco market and forced, as the Surgeon General correctly anticipates, onto welfare. The manufacturers' quotas would be filled by a few large, highly mechanized producers and/or by imports.

What is this price support program that the Surgeon General proposes to repeal? It is a system, freely subscribed to by the tobacco growers in a referendum every three years, by which they limit their production in return for a market price which is set by the government. If the tobacco companies do not bid up to the set price, then the tobacco is taken under loan AT the set price by a cooperative, which then markets it, frequently abroad, and repays the price support loan. The combination of price supports with production controls has made the tobacco program uniquely successful. It is, indeed, a model program. It has not produced expensive surpluses, it has not subsidized overproduction, and it HAS kept the small farmer on the farm through several decades notorious for the virtual extinction of small farmers in other parts of the nation. It is a program conceived to protect the small farmer in the marketplace, and in doing so it has preserved a great resource at small expense. (According to Secretary Bergland, the program costs "75 million dollars to administer, and it generates maybe six billion dollars in tax revenue. . . .”

Dependent on this program are 600,000 tobacco growers (mostly small farmers) and their families-perhaps as many as 3,000,000 people. Obviously then, the cost of putting them all on welfare would far exceed the cost of their welfare payments. What is the total social and monetary cost of uprooting or demoralizing a family, of breaking up a community? We do not know. We know only that many generations may pass before it is paid in full.

It is rare nowadays to run across anyone who would argue that tobacco is a good or a healthy product. Among the most ardent defenders of the tobacco price support program there are many who wish that a different staple crop could be found for the small farmers of their region. But they know that, now, the survival of those small farmers is dependent on tobacco-though the production of tobacco is NOT dependent upon the survival of those small farmers.

A CROP THAT DEMANDS MUCH LABOR, LITTLE LAND

Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of tobacco as a crop is that it requires much labor and little land. This has made it almost an ideal crop for a small family farm, which has its own labor force, and which may have only a few acres suitable for cultivation. The price support program has made it possible for a family to make a substantial income from only a few acres of tobacco. To assume that tobacco can be satisfactorily replaced by just any other crop is therefore dead wrong. To suggest, as Senator Birch Bayh recently did, that it can be satisfactorily replaced by corn is not only wrong but absurd. To get a livable income from corn requires an acreage many times that required by tobacco, and, because it is not protected on the market by production controls and price supports, even vast acreages of corn are now failing to produce a livable income. To make 600,000 tobacco farmers dependent on corn would be a disaster both for them and for the present corn farmers.

But that is not all. Much of the farmland on which tobacco is grown is rolling or hilly clay land, highly subject to erosion. In my own part of the tobacco belt, it is likely that no more than 10 percent of the land can be safely put into cultivation in any one year. With tobacco as the staple crop in a diversified system keeping most of the land in grass, it is possible to cultivate no more than that. Without tobacco-or a crop equivalent to it in per-acre value-much more land would have to be broken for row crops, and thus exposed to the rain.

Finally, it must be considered that tobacco is one of the most labor-intensive crops now being grown. Though production standards have declined in recent years, it is still extraordinarily demanding of care and skill. Moreover, farms