Mr. Kennedy a month ago unveiled his program
for agriculture. We have heard virtually nothing about it since.
No wonder.
This program would cause a million jobs to
be lost on the farms of America.
It would throw out of work another million
people in towns who are in work associated with agriculture.
It would put marketing controls on every farm
commodity, some 250 in all.
It would cut total agricultural marketings
by 20 percent. Cattle marketings would be reduced 15 percent, hog marketings
25 percent.
It would put at least 50,000 new inspectors
on the Federal payroll - inspectors to watch over every farmer, farm, barnyard,
field, and crop.
Even former Secretary of Agriculture Henry
A. Wallace - certainly no conservative - declares the controls imposed
by this program would be more severe than those in many Communist countries.
Specifically, what would this program mean
to the dairy farmer of Wisconsin and elsewhere?
It would cut his total sales of milk and cream.
The Federal Government would give him a quota for the sale of these products
- a percentage of his sales in a base period. Because of seasonal variations
in the production and consumption of milk, it probably would be necessary
to divide his annual quota into monthly or quarterly quotas. How would
the Government determine the appropriate seasonal quotas for the individual
producer? Let Mr. Kennedy tell you.
His program would cut milk production up to
10 percent. It would institute prohibitions against overquota sales and
severe penalties for violators, meted out by some of his 50,000 Federal
inspectors. In the end it would shrink the markets of the dairy farmers
and drive them off the farms in record numbers. Moreover, it would mean
that under the Kennedy plan, a dairyman's son could not take up dairying
without inheriting or buying the right to do so.
All these hidden consequences of the Kennedy
farm program are not something I have dreamed up. They have been traced
out in a special report made public several weeks ago by career farm and
food experts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The dairy farmers, and the other farmers and
ranchers, of Wisconsin and elsewhere deserve better than this. I believe
that tomorrow the voters will reject Mr. Kennedy and has radical, destructive
farm program.