The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-16
PEOPLES FORUM
Bxtensien Service And Farm Mar
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 To the EaiteF bf The Ase-Herald:
 The great need ef the farmers In Alabama Is a system by which their products can be placed on the mafRet in the consuming cen tefs sf population In an orderly way, that will help stabilize the price, prevent needless eompeti- ten. sSeFefswains the market, and unnecessary waste. To bring abeut this condition, celd storage, licensed warehouses are necessary. The estimate of poultry products sold frem Alabama farms last year amount to twenty million dollars, one-fourth the amount of money received by the farmers for the cotton erep. The farmers are not receiving cost of production for beef cattle, hogs, ST sheep. With q system of eeld storage ware houses, when animals are ready for slaughter they can be shipped to the consuming centers, where there arc slaughter houses as well as federal inspection. The ami maIs can be slaughtered, placed in cold storage and placed on the market as there is demand. When tho farmers pastures are eaten out. and the animals ready for market, every day they are carried over there is \ less, for feed and care, Practically all the pastures are eaten out about the same time, and every farmer wants to se1li the demand is not sufficient to care fer all the stuff at tho sans time--a fact that the buyers are well aware of--and somehow the price just naturally drops. The farmer needs his money to meet obligations, and the intermediate credit law was enacted to take care of just such conditions. Stored In government licensed, cold stor- age warehouses. money can be had at . lew rate of interest, and the farmer can meet his obligations; with but nominal carrying charge. his products can be mar keted in an orderly manner as there is demand. with no chance for the crowd who have been ex- plotting him heretofore taking ad- vantage of his condition. This sys- tenn will prevent the frequent and violent fluctuations in price. inur- ing to the benefit of the producer as we'll as the retailer and cpN- sumer.
 There is no attention being given to tho marketing of crops in the state of Alabama by the extension service save such as will sell without effort, and for which there has been a marketing sys- tenn from time immemorial. The farmer is under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to produce stuff when he cannot get cost of 
 That there Is a market at our doors Is attested by the fact that Tennessee farmers sold in Bir- minsham last year millions of dollars worth of poultry products alone; and the estimate is that ninety carloads of food products are sold In the Birmingham dis trict every week, nine-tenths of the stuff coming from north of the Ohio river. We have now in Alabama ten agricultural schools and experiment stations. Why purchase more experiment farms? Would 1t not be a wiser policy to establish cold storage warehouses at Birmingham. Montgomery and Mobile. where the farmer can store his products till there is a demand at fair prices?
 1a9n fa straitened circumstances, with an abundance of food products all around them which they could not sell. Potatoes, for instance, rot ting in the ground because there was no local demand. At the same time ten carloads of potatoes were being sold in Birmingham each week at sf.5o to {: per bushel. Mixed syrup was selling readily on the Birmingham market at n.bo a gallon. and I heard a man in Montgomery say that he bought from the farmers in the wiregrass country 10000 gallons of pure rib bon cane syrup in barrels at 25 cents. There were thousands of tons of peanut hay scattered over tho wireGrass section of first qual- ity, and yet thA farmers could not sell locally enough to pay taxes and buy school books. The direc- tor of the extension service knew all this. because the writer called his attention to the matter. He would not even authorize a dem onstration agent to draw a sight draft, B. l.. attached, on the pres ident of a two hundred thousand dollar bank, who was himself worth a quarter of million dol lara and not bank in the state would have refused to cash the draft. Is that assiting the farmer?
 G. T. M'ELDERRY.