We have helped producers and warehousemen undertake the greatest expansion of onfarm storage facilities and commercial-type storage capacity in history. We have cooperated closely with other agencies that function in the international field, made full use of existing and new foreign trade legislation, and carried on positive negotiations with foreign governments and commercial interests.

Meantime, the "regular" functions of the Department have been strengthened. A sound reorganization of Department agencies has made it possible to meet the real needs of agriculture more effectively than ever before. Increased emphasis has been placed on fundamental research and education programs.

The principle of "flexibility" has at last been applied in price programs as contemplated by Congress in the Agricultural Acts of 1948, 1949, and 1954. Flexible price supports for the basic commodities, which became partially effective with the 1955 harvests and more fully operative in 1956, are designed to work toward better balanced production and consumption. These supports, ranging between 75 and 90 percent of parity are the highest ever written into peacetime agricultural legislation.

A Soil Bank to reduce surpluses, improve income, and strengthen conservation has been put into operation.

Of course agriculture is not out of the woods. As the year ended, farmers faced a beef problem in the drought areas, though outside these dry areas the beef situation is generally stabilized. Poultry and eggs are one of the darker spots in the picture. Poultry and turkey meat and eggs are all setting new production records. The Department has bought turkey meat and eggs to help stabilize prices. A heartening note is that per capita consumption of poultry meat is at a record level.

There are record supplies of wheat, cotton, and corn. These surpluses have hurt farmers, and are hurting them still. We are tackling this problem especially through the Soil Bank and our surplus disposal operations.

We are moving ahead. We are on the march toward a prosperous, expanding, and free agriculture in a prosperous, expanding, and free America. Things are looking up for agriculture, our basic industry. Its welfare is directly connected with the well-being of all our people.

We have heard much talk about agricultural subsidies. There is another kind of subsidy—a hidden subsidy-that few people say much about or think much about. This is a subsidy of farm people to the Nation.

More than half of our young farm men and women leave the farm before they are 25 years old. What does that mean? It means that farm families and farm communities rear, feed, clothe, shelter, and educate these young people throughout their unproductive years. Then, after they get out of college, they head for the city. Today more than twice

as many farm-reared adults are living off the farms as on the farms of the United States.

Historically this has been one of the biggest, most valuable, and least publicized of all subsidies.

We have the most efficient agriculture in the world—and this, too, is a subsidy of sorts. Early in the history of America, 9 working persons out of 10 were in farming. Today only 1 working person out of 10 is in farming. A century ago 1 person in farming provided food and fiber for himself and 3 others. Today 1 farmworker provides for himself and 20 others. Without this prodigious increase in farming efficiency, our great cities and industries would never have been developed.

Our cropland base today is about the same as it was in 1920. For every 10 farmers we had then, we have only 6 now. Yet our people—even though there are 60 million more—have been eating in recent years better than ever before.

A generation ago, the American people spent 25 percent of their income after taxes for food. Today we still spend one-fourth of our income after taxes for food-but a far better diet. If we were content with the diets of a generation ago, it would take less than 20 percent of our present income, after taxes, to buy it.

Food is a good buy-the best buy on the market. We take pride in saying this. We take pride in the great contribution of American farmers to the American economy.

Thirty years ago an hour's take-home pay for industrial workers would buy 51⁄2 loaves of bread-now it buys 10 loaves.

Thirty years ago an hour's take-home pay would buy 32 quarts of milk-now it buys 72.

Then it bought 1/2 pounds of steak-2 pounds now.

Then it bought 111⁄2 pounds of chicken-3 pounds now.

An hour's take-home pay today buys 3 dozen oranges or 112 cans of tomatoes-about 3 times as much as 30 years ago.

And here is what has happened to diets as a result. We consume per person today about twice as much ice cream and tomatoes as we did 30 years ago—more than three times as many oranges-about one-half more chicken-about a third more beef-about one-sixth more eggs.

We drink more milk and eat more cheese, vegetables, and fruits. Our bread and grain products are enriched.

Our diets contain more calcium, protein, iron, vitamins A and C, thiamine and niacin and riboflavin.

Even though there are still people in this country with inadequate diets there has been major progress toward more healthful living.

Our children are bigger, our people live longer, and malnutrition is no longer the scourge of 1 family out of 3 as it was in days within our own memory.

This is what an efficient agriculture has meant to our Nation and our people.

This is why the U. S. Department of Agriculture is honored to serve American farm families and, through them, to serve all the people of our land.

FEDERAL-STATES RELATIONS

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE

Because of agricultural research:

A wheat farmer in Minnesota can now plant a new variety of durum wheat that is resistant to the deadly stem rust, race 15B, which for several years has wiped out his crop.

A dairy farmer in Wisconsin has a herd free of brucellosis, and the stepped-up brucellosis eradication campaign has greatly decreased the threat that this costly disease might be introduced into his herd.

A Nebraska farmer is changing over to a new high-producing and disease-resistant hybrid sorghum that promises to do the same job in increasing efficiency of sorghum production that hybrids have already done for corngrowers.

A Florida citrus grower observes with satisfaction the State-Federal program to eradicate an invasion of the Mediterranean fruitfly, which otherwise would seriously threaten his livelihood.

A Texas truck farmer is proudly growing the first hybrid spinach. It is resistant to the most damaging diseases, quickly makes a heavy crop, and is tailored for machine harvesting.

A hog raiser in Illinois, who got rid of vesicular exanthema when he began cooking the garbage fed to his hogs a few years ago, now gets dividends on this practice by fewer cases of cholera, erysipelas, trichinosis, and tuberculosis in hogs.

These are a few of the people scattered over the United States who benefited from agricultural research in fiscal 1956. Millions of others reaped advantages also: Consumers who bought safe and wholesome federally inspected meat; farmers and ranchers who were protected against buying 706,129 doses of worthless and contaminated brucellosis vaccine; thousands of farmers and feeders who, but for the vigilance of ARS, might have bought hog cholera vaccine contaminated with the germs of swine erysipelas.

The Agricultural Research Service has a twofold responsibility: (1) To conduct research aimed at finding better methods of farming, improving the farm home, breeding

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better types of plants and animals, and gathering new knowledge that will enable farmers to produce and market more efficiently. (2) To put the results of research to work in regulatory programs that protect farms from invasion by foreign pests and diseases, to eradicate dangerous pests and diseases that do invade us, and to reduce the damage from those it is impossible or impractical to eradicate.

Crops To Fit the Farmer's Needs

Much ARS research is devoted to efforts to find new lines and crosses of row-crop and forage plants that are good field producers and that have built-in resistance to an increasing number of plant diseases and insect pests. During fiscal 1956