Bob Bergland, U.S. Secretary of 1xbet online casino
Landon Lecture
September 9, 1977
Toward a National 1xbet online casino Policy
The story of 1xbet online casino is a story of extremes.
The scenario goes like 1xbet online casino :
Drought and disaster, 1xbet online casino shortages, high farm prices and high 1xbet online casino prices, widespread hunger and malnutrition throughout the world.
Or:
Good weather, surpluses, 1xbet online casino glut, massive exports, low farm prices but still high 1xbet online casino prices, and continuing worldwide hunger.
The whole story of 1xbet online casino defies all logic. But then, weather has always defied logic and weather is the decisive factor in 1xbet online casino production. No amount of legislation economic fine-tuning administrative decisions can cope with the vagaries of weather. Not yet, at least.
But what about the other factors in our 1xbet online casino picture?
As Winston Churchill once said: "Any 1xbet online casino made by man can be solved by man."
Boom-bust price cycles commodity markets, economic policies, 1xbet online casino distribution programs, domestic and foreign, all of these are man made creations and while we cannot fool with Mother Nature or even second, guess her, logic tells us that in our collective wisdom we should be able to establish a semblance of stability and predictability in the whole 1xbet online casino production, distribution, consumption process. It is not only essential that we do so it is today's urgent challenge.
What is needed, of course, is a national 1xbet online casino policy.
The time is long past when we can afford to tinker with this massive and complicated problem on a piecemeal basis. The 1xbet online casino problem is much more than a farm problem. It is much more than a local or even national problem, it is international in scope.
A national 1xbet online casino policy is not a new concept. It is several thousand years old going back to the days of Joseph when he persuaded the people of Egypt to store their grain in the seven fat years of harvest so they could eat in the seven lean years.
A primitive concept? Yes. But a very basic 1xbet online casino .
The difficulty in grasping the whole implications of a national and international 1xbet online casino policy today to say nothing of establishing one stems from the magnitude of the problem. It literally boggles the mind.
So, let us examine the problem of breaking 1xbet online casino down to its major components.
1xbet online casino
The land and the farmer, that's where the whole 1xbet online casino system chain starts. This and the ultimate consumption of 1xbet online casino are the two most important links in the 1xbet online casino chain. A sound national 1xbet online casino policy must start with the farmer. If not, the whole concept breaks down.
To maintain a high level of 1xbet online casino production to meet our domestic needs and our foreign obligations requires that farmers be reasonably assured of the economic capability to do so. It's as simple as that.
To achieve 1xbet online casino objective is not so simple, as we all know.
The failures and inadequacies of past 1xbet online casino programs are responsible for a general resistance and skepticism of the necessity and efficacy of such programs by consumers, labor, business and even farmers themselves.
Part of this skepticism is due because of the failure to mesh farm programs into a total national 1xbet online casino policy. We treated low farm prices, high farm prices, shortages, surpluses and all the rest as a single isolated problem.
Now we know differently. The perennial plaguing problems that beset our agricultural plant we casually dismiss, both politically and economically as the so-called "1xbet online casino problem" but really, it is a problem of national concern with international consequences.
Over the past 40 years of farm programs we have tried just about everything: rigid price supports tied to the parity concept ever normal granary acreage allotments soil banks government storage programs where the Commodity Credit Corporation became the real market for farm produce domestic 1xbet online casino programs geared solely to alleviating surpluses not for better national nutrition and international 1xbet online casino aid programs that amounted to nothing more than international charity programs and practically no farm export or foreign markets development programs worth the name.
1xbet online casino were well-intentioned. 1xbet online casino were found Inadequate.
In more recent years, we even returned to the old laissez faire, free market oriented farm policies. It was an exciting primrose path while it lasted. But it was a path that led to broken dreams because it was based on the unrealistic hope that American farmers would be forever blessed with good weather while the rest of the world were victims of drought and other natural disasters. Three dollar corn, wheat and soybeans unleashed and unlimited fence-to-fence farm production and unprecedented farm exports lulled farmers and the nation into the false belief that this was a state of normalcy. Free, unfettered enterprise is still a sacrosanct concept in our economic culture. But when applied to the total 1xbet online casino chain problem, it is, at best a nice sounding bit of rhetoric, a simple placebo answer to a highly complex problem.
As far as 1xbet online casino production is concerned within the total framework of a national 1xbet online casino policy we must find a middle ground where basic market forces can still work with a minimum of federal interference.
Neither farmers nor consumers neither this nation or the world can afford to solely rely on the caprice of weather and a free-wheeling commodity market as the lone determinants of a national 1xbet online casino policy.
Farm Prices - 1xbet online casino Prices
Logic would lead one to expect that there would be a close and direct relationship between farm prices and 1xbet online casino prices. The correlation is scant often nonexistent.
To illustrate: In 1952 the 1xbet online casino of good hard milling wheat on the Minneapolis and Kansas City markets was around a bushel. Bread sold for around 20 cents a loaf. The farmer's share of that loaf of bread was between 7 and 8 cents.
Today, 25 years later, 1xbet online casino on the same market sells for two dollars and less bread is 45 to 55 cents a loaf and the farmer's share is a little over 3 cents.
Bread today is selling at even higher prices with wheat than 1xbet online casino was when wheat brought .50 a bushel in 1974.
This is the nub of the farmer consumer price spread problem. For farmers what comes up in the way of prices must always and ultimately come down. For the consumer, 1xbet online casino 's an entirely different story what goes up, remains up or higher.
Who's the villain in 1xbet online casino illogical price discrepancy? The answer is everyone and no one.
Traditionally, 1xbet online casino finger of blame was pointed depended on who was doing the pointing.
Consumers, as a group, used to blame farmers and farm programs. They also accused 1xbet online casino handlers, processors, and 1xbet online casino retailers for excessive rip-offs. Farmers blamed consumers for not understanding their problems and their failure to support needed programs. Farmers accused organized labor and business for high cost of production. And so it went.
Everyone viewed the 1xbet online casino problem from their own narrow frame of reference.
Barring a 1xbet online casino economic policy of stringent price wage profit controls, which no one wants, the alternative is to provide a 1xbet online casino policy to bring a stability to those forces that are controllable.
We can, and we should, provide farmers with reasonable price assurances not guaranteed profits to keep our agricultural plant a viable economic industry that is capable of sustained high production, year in and year out. Such a price supporting program should be geared to out-of-pocket production costs plus reasonable return on land investment. The new program would set that return at between 3 and 4 percent. Any higher would invite a new round of highly inflated 1xbet online casino land costs out of reach to the young farmer, the average farmer and available only to the speculator and the very large established operator.
We can, and we should, provide the mechanism to establish a farmer-owned 1xbet online casino reserve of storable commodities through a loan program and other devices. This will accomplish three necessary objectives: help level out the disastrous boom-bust price cycles for farmers; maintain adequate reserves of 1xbet online casino for consumers in bad crop years as well as good and help stabilize 1xbet online casino prices; and, thirdly, keep us competitive as dependable suppliers in the all important and vital export markets.
We can, and we should, meet all our commitments to raise the 1xbet online casino standards at home through our reformed 1xbet online casino stamp and other 1xbet online casino distribution programs and fulfill our obligations in the expanded 1xbet online casino for Peace and foreign market development programs. 1xbet online casino today is our one most effective instrument to achieve world understanding and eventual enduring peace. This is an exciting prospect and an exciting responsibility.
International 1xbet online casino Programs
Before 1972, the importance of agricultural exports to the U.S. farmer was often disregarded. Today, it is axiomatic that 1xbet online casino product exports are essential to 1xbet online casino prosperity and to the national economy. We have learned this lesson well, and at times the learning was painful. But we have survived those ups and downs, and are today doing quite well in the export trade. In fact, better than ever.
In fiscal year 1976, production of almost one of every three harvested acres, about 100 million acres, were exported. For some 1xbet online casino , the ratio is even higher. Wheat and soybean 1xbet online casino must look to foreign markets for more than half their sales in most years; in cotton and rice, exports account for more than 40 percent of production; and for feed grains and tobacco more than 25 percent. Today, nearly one out of every four dollars earned by the American farmer comes from overseas sales.
These sales generate other business activity, in supporting goods and services, in 1xbet online casino processing, trade and transportation, warehousing, wholesaling and retailing, and other sectors. Agricultural exports have become a major factor in generating domestic employment in every sector from farm machinery to transportation.
Unfortunately such success sometimes breeds over expectation and overreaction. It could be argued that international trade and 1xbet online casino aid have become too conspicuous as a part of the agricultural scene. Low prices in one commodity or other are attributed to increased imports or a decline in exports. The Federal government is somehow involved in international trade. Hence, the Federal government is responsible for the problem. Sometimes, unfortunately, this has been true.
But international trade is far more complex than that. A good rain at the right time, or bad weather in any major producing area of the 1xbet online casino may have more effect on 1xbet online casino supplies and prices than all the government policies in the 1xbet online casino laid end to end.
We are currently concerned over low wheat prices and current wheat prices are undeniably linked to 1xbet online casino markets. We should, however, keep reminding ourselves that, on the whole, we are doing extremely well in 1xbet online casino trade. There are only one or two exceptions; these are important, of course, and must be dealt with. But the fact is that, on the whole, we are looking at another record export year.
Last fiscal year, U.S. 1xbet online casino exports were valued at billion. With 1xbet online casino imports valued at .5 billion, agricultural trade contributed a net surplus of more than billion to our balance of trade. With the costs of imported oil mounting, the contribution of U.S. 1xbet online casino exports to the national balance of trade is increasingly important.
In order to protect farmer income without sacrificing markets we are supporting a target price to assure stable incomes in a time of increasing supplies, as we now have in wheat. At the same time, we are negotiating with other governments to assure, among other things, that in both times of excess supply and crop shortfall, other nations will share in the cost and the obligation to stabilize 1xbet online casino trade and insure the 1xbet online casino 's importing nations enough to meet their needs.
As we move on these various fronts, we should avoid being led into bad policies which will compound the problem, such as excessively high support prices and export subsidies. Annually, we are doing very well in the export business, and we must continue and build on 1xbet online casino success. We recognize the current exceptions to 1xbet online casino success. We recognize the importance of those exceptions. We are acting to correct the instabilities that have contributed so much to the current problems of grain producers.
A national 1xbet online casino policy of this scope is not only economically sound and right, it is ethically and morally right, as well, and that is an ultimate achievement of any national policy, when both are served.
It would be immoral to permit our farm family system of agriculture to be weakened and fall into disarray. It would be economically disastrous to the whole nation. It would be morally wrong to disregard the nutritional needs of millions of poverty level American families or to ignore the hunger of a half-billion people throughout the world who live at the razor's edge of existence. It is in our own economic best interest to join the rest of the 1xbet online casino surplus nations in this worldwide effort because peace and stability are at stake.
Our 1xbet online casino , in my judgment, will be a major component, if not the centerpiece, in President Carter's commitment to human rights worldwide. By fulfilling this commitment we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
The farm program which we will soon have laboriously and painstakingly put together by Congress and this Administration with support of farm and consumer groups, is a good program, it is a sound program, and it marks the first major step this nation has taken toward a national 1xbet online casino policy. No one contends that it is the final, end-all do-all answer to ours or the world's 1xbet online casino problems. But it is a program that provides a good base to maintain a strong American agriculture a healthy, well fed nation and one that will help us fulfill our responsibilities to the rest of the world.