Evening star., 1943-08-13
Farm Leaders Fear
Milk Shortage Unless
Prices Are Adjusted

The War Food Administration
and the Office of Price Administra-
ton are faced with the necessity of
choosing between a readjustment of
milk prices or milk shortage
without parallel" Charles W. Hol-
man. secretary of the National Co.
operative Milk Producers Fedora
ton, declared here today in the
wake of similar warnings on two
other fronts.
In a formal statement, Mr.. Hol-
man charged that ION the heads of
the administration rests the respon-
slbility of readjusting the relative
prices of agricultural commodities,
feed and farm wage rates If the
Nations milk supply is to be MAIN
tained-and if our limited grain
supplies are to be conserved in their
conversion into human food"
Policies adopted by the admins
tration since the war began in re-
gard to milk prices and production
have failed to take into account the
efficient utilization of scarce feed
supplies, equitable treatment to milk
producers and the resultant effect on
war food production, the farm
leader asserted.
Jones Receives Warning.
War Food Administrator Marvin
Jones was warned yesterday by a
group Of dairymen and poultrymen
of Northeastern States that 43,000,-
900 consumers In that region face
short supplies of milk, eggs and
poultry during the next II months
unless the Government takes steps
to provide livestock feed.
Farmers in l3 New England and
Middle Atlantic States. who nor
mally depend on imports of corn
and other feed products from the
Midwest, are now unable to obtain
supplies, the producers said, because
Government price policies discour-
age their shipment East.
A report was laid before Mr.. Jones
by committee of the Northeastern
Dairy Conference and the North
eastern Poultry Producers Council,
headed by J. A. Mcconnell of Ithica.
N. Y. He also is chairman of the
National Feed Advisory Council, a
governmental advisory group.
The feed grain shortage for the
coming year in the Northwest was
estimated at l,675 900 tons.
Goss Fears Shortages.
Albert S. GoSs, master of the Ma
tional Grange, in an address before
the Junior Board of Commerce yes
terday, likewise warned of serious
milk shortages in the Nation, re-
sulting, he said, in part from OPA
ceilings on milk. He alos predicted
that milk rationing will be inevitable
in some sections of the country.
He described the dairymen's plight
as one of the most serious in agri-
! culture.
Mr.. Holman declared yesterday in
an address in Hartford, Conn, dis
ease and pestilence will become
epidemic throughout the Nation if
milk is forced intothe black market
by point rationing"
In his statement today, Mr.. Hol-
man said the OPA in developing
price controls over fluid milk has
resorted to strange, economically
unjust and nutritionally unsound
tactics-its policy has been to freeze
fluid milk prices while labor, wages
and feed prices have been allowed
to rise
"OPA appears to have operated
on the principle that milk is pro-
duced by farm family labor which
requires no cash wage, that the milk
cows and other physical resources
are owned by operators and there
fore require no cash rent, and that
great part of the feed supply is
home crown and therefore requires
no cash OUTLAW"