AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
ONE of the basic causes of the American farm problem is the failure of agriculture to keep abreast of industry in research and development. Farmers have concentrated on learning how to increase their yields, leaving it up to the Government to worry about their surpluses, while hundreds of new industrial discoveries have pushed the farmer out of much of his market. Synthetics, for example, have taken over 45% of the market for natural fibers, 62% of the market for leather shoe soles, and two-thirds of the market for household soap. Last week, prompted by the recent report of the President's Commission on Increased Industrial Use of Agricultural Products. Congress was considering a handful of bills to authorize a concentrated attack on the problem. Main point of the report: while industry is spending some $3 billion a year on developing new consumer products and improving old ones, combined governmental and private agricultural research totals only $375 million—most of it to grow larger crops.
As a start toward making agriculture competitive with industry in research, the commission recommended that the present $16 million utilization research budget of the Agriculture Department be tripled, with much of the money being used to farm out promising research projects to private laboratories. The commission also recommended federal incentives, such as fast tax write-offs, to encourage investment in industries using farm products.
But farm experts consider the commission's plan only a beginning, urge a crash program costing four or five times what the commission recommended. The commission itself listed $211 million worth of agricultural research projects now under way that could be pushed through immediately. Among them: i) development of powdered whole milk that tastes like fresh 2) a method to make newsprint from southern hardwoods, which would make up income small farmers have lost in cotton; 3) a process to extract fertilizer from chicken feathers; 4) a way to get from rice hulls 750,000 Ibs. a year of a special wax, now imported; 5) development of a host of new drugs, such as antibiotics from tomato leaves and hormones from hay.
There is plenty of evidence that research can solve many farm-surplus problems. Powdered eggs have been so improved that they have hatched a new line of cake and cookie mixes. Only a few years ago surplus-ridden citrus growers in Florida were destroy ing tons of oranges in an effort to bolster prices; now about 50% of their crop is being turned into frozen orange juice and many growers are expanding. A new process, developed by the Agriculture Department, to dehydrate cooked potatoes has proved so successful that several manufacturers have put the product on the market. Predicts Dr. G. Edward Hilbert. research director of the President's commission: "This development will do for the potato industry what frozen concentrated orange juice has done for the citrus industry." -