nearly 2,161,000,000 bushels of corn remained on farms January 1, and these are bolstered by relatively large stocks of other feed grains. While these farm supplies of feed grains are somewhat smaller than on January 1 of the past 2 years, they are larger than in all but 3 years of record.

Hay stocks appear ample in most areas. Soybean stocks are much larger than on any other January 1, because of the record crop, and despite a far larger movement from farms than in any other OctoberDecember quarter.

While yields generally increased in 1950, acreage in production was down. The 52 principal crops were planted or grown on nearly 358,000,000 acres, about 12,000,000 less than in 1949. Harvested acreages of these principal crops amounted to about 341,000,000 acres, the smallest total since 1942. This was nearly 16,000,000 acres less than the relatively large 1949 total.

The 1950 season again emphasized the importance of farm mechanization. Power machinery enabled producers to wait out periods of adverse weather and make rapid progress with field preparation, planting, cultivation, or harvest when conditions became favorable. Such widespread mechanization, all the more necessary in periods of heavy military and industrial use of our manpower resources, makes agriculture extremely dependent upon adequate supplies of machine parts, replacement equipment, and skilled operators, to keep its productive power at the peak.

Output of livestock commodities increased in 1950. Total production of livestock and livestock products for sale or home use was 39 percent above the 1935-39 average, only about 3 percent below the all-time peak reached in 1944.

Fortunately for the Nation's future meat supply, cattle numbers have been increasing since 1948. The increase during 1950 was probably as large or larger than the gain of nearly 2,000,000 head of cattle and calves during 1949. Hog production also increased, with 1950 production estimated at about 101,000,000 head-5,000,000 more than in 1949, 18,000,000 more than in 1946. The 1950 fall pig crop was 9 percent larger than the 1949 fall crop, and a 6 percent increase in the 1951 spring crop over the same 1950 crop is indicated by farmers' intentions as of December 1.

The sheep situation is less favorable. Wool supplies are tight. In 1941, United States wool stocks were low, but domestic production was close to the all-time record and supplies available in the British Dominions were very large. Now stocks are again relatively low and domestic production last year was over 40 percent below 1941.

At present, the United States is competing with other importing countries for supplies from surplus producing areas. Surplus stocks piled up during World War II have been depleted and world consumption in 1951 will be limited to current production.

Total production of milk for 1950 is estimated at 120,000,000,000 pounds, compared with 119,000,000,000 pounds in 1949, and second only to the 1945 record of over 121,000,000 pounds.

This impressive record of our agriculture offers ample proof that American farmers have both the will and the ability to provide adequately for the needs of our Nation in peace or war, provided they are not obstructed by adverse factors beyond their own control.

GEARING OF POLICIES AND ACTIVITIES TO DEFENSE EFFORT

Agriculture's strong position and its ability to assume an essential role in defense mobilization is due in no small part to the foresight and wisdom of the Congress in providing constructive farm programs that have strengthened our agriculture economically, improved rural standards of living, encouraged farm ownership and better conditions of tenure, fostered research and education, provided necessary credit assistance, and conserved and improved our land resources in the public interest.

These farm programs of price support, conservation, credit, electrification, research, extension, and other services, proved of tremendous help before, during, and after World War II. They are equally invaluable in the present emergency. There is need to reemphasize the vital role of such programs in agricultural production, and consequently in national production. More production, and more efficient production, is our defense objective.

Even in normal peacetime, the programs of the Department of Agriculture are in a sense defense work. They defend the Nation's supply of food and fiber against insects and diseases that threaten to curb our plant and animal production, against weather risks, and against economic hazards beyond the farmer's control.

Rather than weaken any of agriculture's defenses against normal hazards, we need now to strengthen them.

Much of the Department of Agriculture's existing work relates directly to our mobilization's objective for agriculture: more efficient production of raw materials basic to the strength of the Nation's economy.

Most day-by-day peacetime tasks of the Department of Agriculture are the same tasks that are now more essential than ever to security and stability. They are designed to strengthen agriculture's productive ability, to safeguard our food supply, and to assure conservation of productive resources for the long pull that lies ahead.

As a consequence, our budget estimates for 1952 provide for maintenance of agricultural activities in general at about the current level. That is by no means a "business as usual" attitude; just the opposite is true. Our emphasis has been placed upon our defense responsibilities, with redirection of activities, wherever necessary, to serve defense purposes more effectively and more economically. All agencies of the Department have undertaken, under general departmental leadership, a comprehensive study and continuing action to defer, curtail, or otherwise modify program activities and related supply and equipment management practices.

Our research people are making plans for shifting much of their work to meet special needs of mobilization. We will have to accelerate our research on such things as dehydration of foods, and production of critical materials now in short supply.

A large part of this redirection of emphasis will not, of course, be felt immediately, but rather will be cumulative in effect over the next few months. However, some reductions are proposed. Increases are recommended only for a relatively few items to meet specific legislative requirements, to strengthen and intensify work which will contribute directly to the defense program, and to provide necessary protection against insect pests and plant and animal diseases.

For much of our work, no redirection has been necessary. Let me give you a few simple illustrations of just how our Department's normal operations have become significant defense responsibilities.

It is to the Bureau of Animal Industry and Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine in our Agricultural Research Administration that the Civil Defense Administration looks as our first line of protection against possible attempts to sabotage our food and fiber resources. Thus a job that the Department does every day in peacetime becomes an increasingly essential one in wartime. The same scientists and the same laboratories that protect our food and fiber from accidental infestations will be depended upon to protect us from the increased hazard of deliberate infestations.

The Agricultural Research Administration has an efficient peacetime system for preventing the introduction into this country of insect pests and plant and animal diseases. Inspectors are always on the watch on our borders and at ports of entry. Almost every day potential enemies of the insect and disease world are intercepted and turned back. It is no little task, even in peacetime. Without alert safeguards they would be invading us by ships, by rail, by auto, and by airplane; they can come secreted in packages of food, in wrappings of gifts, in baggage, and in ship's garbage. Even parcel-post packages have been found to be a means of infiltration.

If only a few of these dangerous biological invaders could establish a beachhead they might wreck our production plans. So it is vital that our quarantine system, which has been geared to so-called normal situations, should now be put on an emergency basis.

Take another example: During World War II, our Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations provided our military with valuable information on conditions in other lands. Whenever our forces made an invasion, they took with them accurate knowledge of the agricultural and food conditions they would encounter. This agency was the source of much of the basic data for the distribution among our allies of the foods and other agricultural products in scarce supply. These and other essential services were the wartime dividends of peacetime work.

OFAR's activities are increasingly important in these times of international tension. Food is an important instrument of foreign policy, and we are necessarily concerned with the strength of all free peoples in the current world struggle of ideologies.

Incidentally, in line with this committee's interest, I am glad to report that improved arrangements have been made and are being made with the Department of State with regard to the agricultural attachés, who are our chief source of information on agriculture in foreign countries.

The work I have so far discussed is by no means all that we are doing for preparedness.

Less dramatic, perhaps, but certainly no less important to the Nation's defense are the Department's other activities aimed toward abundant and efficient production by American agriculture. We can and must provide safeguards against factors that would obstruct the abundant production we need in the critical period ahead. In that effort, every bureau and agency in the Department is involved.

In our preparedness program, how do we get more efficient production? There is no magic about it. It is basically the same as at any

other time. Science adds something to the sum total of knowledge. Through the educational channels, the facts get to farm people. The farmer, if he finds it feasible from an economic standpoint, uses a new method, an improved variety, or a better chemical and gets a bigger or better product with less work or less cost. It is the familiar pattern. The only difference is that the greater efficiency is more important when our survival is at stake.

In our preparedness program, how do farmers keep informed of prospective demand and other economic conditions? They depend even more than usual upon the economic statistics that the Department prepares.

In addition, national requirements for various commodities must be computed as the basis for production plans, and farmers must be kept informed as to available supplies of fertilizer, insecticides, and other materials essential to their production. In short, the preparedness program adds to the need for good statistical services and continuing economic analysis. This means we call upon the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in countless ways, day after day.

In our preparedness program, how do we organize a production program? How do we translate decisions at the administrative level into action in the field? How do we make sure our farmers are getting the labor and supplies and materials necessary to do the job we are expecting them to do?

We learned during World War II that the use of farmer committees was the most practical and most efficient method. Fortunately, we now have available an effective Nation-wide farmer committee system, already functioning and familiar with such important responsibilities.

In our preparedness program, how do we protect our productive resources so that our ability to produce can be maintained at high levels for as long a period as may become necessary? We do it in the very same way we have learned to safeguard our resources in peacetime through the technical and financial assistance of our soilconservation programs. The only difference is that the need for conservation farming will become all the greater as the pressure for production increases.

In our preparedness program, how do we increase our output of forest products so necessary to industrial expansion, and yet protect our capacity for sustained production by keeping our basic resources strong? Mobilization on top of our own expanding domestic economy is going to mean tremendous demand on our forests. We have enough forest land to do the job, provided we manage that land well.

In times like these we reap the benefit of our past and present protective management of the national forests, which now contain more than 30 percent of the Nation's total volume of standing saw timber. Our forestry chief is confident we can meet our obligations, both for the present and for the future, if we go about it carefully and wisely. Production is not yet up to sustained-yield capacity on many of the national forests.

If funds are provided to build needed access roads and provide sufficient personnel to prepare and supervise the timber sales, the sustained-yield output of timber from national forests can be increased by more than 50 percent within a very few years. Hence, the economic importance of protecting our forest lands from the ravages of fire in peacetime is increased manyfold in time of war or threat of war, with its threat of sabotage and incendiary attacks.

It is likewise important that we build up our range forage resources as one means of increasing the supply of meat, hides, and wool. In this period of greatly increased demand for livestock products, reseeding of national-forest ranges and improvements to facilitate their most productive management are urgently needed. They are good investments at any time, but especially so right now. Again, our normal peacetime objectives and work in forestry become of even greater significance in time of emergency.

In our preparedness program, how do we protect the Nation against the always present hazard of crop failure due to unfavorable weather? In normal times we have learned to minimize the threat of bad weather by maintaining safe reserves of feed, food, and fiber. Under present conditions, we appreciate more than ever our stocks of the storable farm commodities, stocks which are now accepted as valuable strategic reserves. They need to be kept at greater than normal levels, as insurance against drought or other unfavorable conditions. That requires more storage space. Fortunately, the emergency storage program has added 700,000,000 bushels of storage facilities-enough to house, for example, two-thirds of an average wheat crop.

We could go on right down the line on how almost all the activities of our department either already fit into defense purposes or are being redirected toward that end.

One of agriculture's most immediate concerns is that of keeping the necessary tools of production flowing to the farm. The Nation must not underestimate the importance of adequate equipment and supplies for farmers-and for industries supplying farmers.

We have taken advantage of the already existing framework of the Production and Marketing Administration in setting up the necessary machinery for such essential new defense purposes.

We have established an Office of Materials and Facilities to act as claimant for farmers and food processors and producers of farm equipment, to make sure they get needed essential materials. We're watching the whole farm-equipment and supply situation very closely. While aggressively seeking to eliminate the possibility of shortages, we realize that we may have to work with shortages. The job then will be to put available materials and supplies to the best use.

We have established an Office of Requirements and Allocations to be responsible for integrating the demand for farm products-to find out how much food we need, how much we've got, and to balance off requirements of civilian, military, ECA, and other outlets in view of available supplies. We seek to give the farmer the best guidance possible as to the total production needs of the Nation.

An Administrator's Program Staff has been set up to assist in developing and coordinating defense program policies and plans, and a new Price Staff has been given the responsibility for evaluations and recommendations on price questions. We have established liaison with the Department of Labor on manpower problems, in the capacity of claimant for agriculture's necessary labor supply. With the more complex, mechanized agriculture of today, and with fewer farm workers, it is even more important to retain key skilled workers on farms than it was in World War II.

In general, PMA's existing commodity and action branches and offices have been given basic responsibility for developing and carrying out defense programs and activities in their normal fields of operation.