Evening star., 1935-07-25
CONSERvAT|ONA AIM.
OF IOWA FARMERS
Replacement of Reduction
as Basis for Future
Program Urged.

special DlSpdJcn TO ne otdT.
DES MONIES, Iowa, July Is (N.A.
N.A1.-Iowa farmers express them
selves emphatically in favor of reten-
ton of A. A. A. programs.
Sentiment favors conservation,
rather tina nreduction, as the basis
of the farm program of the future.
Representatives of all OF Iowa's 100
county corn-hog associations, meet
ing at Iowa State College last week,
voted in favor of making future ben
eft payments on the basis of land
seeded down to grass instead OF the
present plan of paying the farmer
for crops not raised.
Their action was on the aSsump-
ton that processing taxes and bene-
fit payments would be continued, of
course, but they ratified this means
of financing adjustment of land use
and crop production.
Favor Amendment.
Expressing fear of the return of
the days of 10-cent corn and 3-cent
hogs, farmers have mtimated that if
every other means of adjusting sup
plies of farm products tC domestic
demand proved Intellectual, amend
ment of the Constitution to permit
federalized control would be in order.
R. M. Evans, chairman of the Iowa
Corn-Hog Committee. makes out
good case for an adjustment program
under the present law, however, if it
be in the interests of conservation.
Fear of depletion of soil fertility
looms just as gloomy a specter in the
farm future as apprehension of re-
turn of starvation prices, he says.
Adjust our land to the crops for
which it is best fitted, seed down to
grass acreage subject to serious ero-
sion and soil depletion, and we will
have solved also the problem of the
farm surplus" Evans declares.
This Nation has never found it was
unconstitutional to take steps to pro-
tect our national resources Of minerals,
oil. forests. Why is not the conserva-
ton of our great natural resource of
soil fertility one of national concern as
insurance that We will have adequate
food supplies in the future, in time of
peace or in time of WARP"
Overproduction in Overplanting.
Evans contends that most overpro-
duction has been the result of farmers
seeking to bolster shrinking incomes
by planting every available acre to
crops, thereby robbing the soil of its
fertility and producing at a diSad-
vantage surplus crops that glutted an
already overburdened market.
No fear is expressed for the i'm
mediate future of farm prices, of
course, for. with the A. A. A. adjust
ment and the still more effective
control of production exercised by
the drought, most farm prices now
are satisfactory. But farm leaders
believe the attractiveness of the pres
ent price of farm produce will be too
great a temptation for farmers TO
resist and that overproduction again
will result unless farmers are per-
mitted to cooperate with the Federal
Government in voluntary crop-con-
troll programs.
Pressure has been exercised by the
Iowa farm groups on their Repre-
sentatives in Congress to support the
A. A. A. amendments, which they be-
lieve will meet many of the objections
raised by the Circuit Court of Ap-
peals in the recent processing tax de-
ciSion in Boston.
But if worst comes to worst and
If a situation arises in which the
A. A. A. programs appear definitely
to be out, farmers who are enjoying
the best prices in years assert they
will. fight to the last ditch to save
the A. A. A.
Among the lines of attack suggested
are some that might be claSsed as
retaliatory. One proposal is for
drive against industrial tariffs if the
farmer should be denied the processing
tax which Secretary of Agriculture
Wallace has termed the farmers pro-
tective tariff.
Wrath Against Small Packers.
Resentment against professors, such
as the packers and millerS who have
started court action on processing
taxes, also is freely expressed in farm
circles. The farm wrath is not for
Swift. Armour, Cudahy and Wilson,
but against the small packers and
those operating at interior points in
the Middle West, for it is only the
latter who have initiated suits against
the A. A A
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cL. MI. - D~-