VOL 18 No. 19
Ceiling Effect Seen Uncertain
President Nixon’s meat price ceiling has
caused a few ripples in local agricultural
circles, but no waves. This is the feeling we
got in a Friday morning LANCASTER
FARMING survey of the county’s livestock
industry.
The President’s 'Thursday evening
statement is' seen largely as a political
gambit. In effect, the administration has
frozen meat prices at an historic high. Even
without the threat of national consumer
boycotts, there is some downward
pressure on meat prices. If prices go down
over the short run, the administration
stands to reap some glory. If they stay at
their present level, the administration
could still construe its move as a successful
battle in the war against inflation.
Retail and wholesale meat prices are to
go no higher than the average prices for
the past 30 days, according to the
presidential order. Most farmers locally
would be happy to have the market prices
they’ve been enjoying for the past month.
Both hogs and beef cattle hit record highs
on area auctions within that period.
Harold Esbenshade, a Mount Joy beef
farmers, said he didn't think the ceiling
would greatly affect farmers right away. He
feels the President's move was designed to
Jesse G. Balmer, (right) Lititz R 4, was one of the local
dairymen honored Thursday at Pennfield Corporation’s
annual dairy awards banquet He’s shown receiving a trophy
from Robert Gregory, Pennfield’s dairy and livestock
marketing manager. (See “Feed Cost”, p. 12)
This flock of tourists, rumored to be from New Jersey, descended on a
freshly plowed field outside Bird-in-Hand on Thursday afternoon. Like
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Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 31,1973
quiet down the clamoring of consumer
groups for lower meat prices.
Esbenshade noted that prices for both
beef and pork have started down, and feed
costs have been easing up somewhat in
recent weeks as well. He feels that most
farmers will be able to live with the prices
they’ve been getting on livestock auctions
the past month.
Richard Proether, from the Pennsylvania
Farmers Association office in Harrisburg,
said his organization opposed, in principal,
price controls on raw agricultural products.
The Nixon ceiling was not, in theory, such a
control since it dealt only with retail and
wholesale prices. In practice, however, it
couldn’t help but affect the price the
farmer gets. Proether said it was im
possible to gauge the influence the ceiling
will have on farm prices. He also felt the
move was motivated largely by an attempt
to appease vocal consumer groups.
Across the state, consumer groups
seemed to be viewing the President's
action largely with' contempt. “Too little,
too late,” was the typical comment of one
consumet activist in Philadelphia. Most of
the consumer groups are still planning to
participate in a nationwide meat boycott in
the weeks ahead.
Funk Tells LEAF Meet...
Farms - Going but not Gone
“Lancaster County is losing
farmland at the rate of 8000 acres
a year,” Amos Funk told a
meeting of the Lancaster En
vironmental Action Federation
(LEAF) on Wednesday night at
Franklin and Marshall College.
“From 1954 to 1964, we were
losing farms at the rate of just
4000 acres a year. If the rate of
loss doubles again, we won’t have
any farms left in 30 years.”
Funk had been invited as a
farm representative to address
the gathering of LEAF’S land use
task force. Also speaking were
Anthony Perella, from the
Lancaster Chamber of Com
merce, and Donovan Smith,
representing the local tourist
industry.
Funk noted that Lancaster
County contains a total of 604,000
acres. Of this, some 440,000 acres,
or almost 70 percent of the total
land area, is devoted to
agriculture. Some 76 percent of
the county’s farmland has class
one, two or three soil. Across the
state, farms with class one, two
or three soils average only 38
percent.
In addition to soil productivity.
Funk said there are other factors
which bode well for the future of
farming in the county. The im
portance of agriculture to the
local economy is one of them. The
county produces some 12 percent
of the state’s total agricultural
output. The average age
of the Lancaster County
farmer is younger than most -
46.5 years, as opposed to the mid
fifties in many other parts of the
state.
With inadequate planning, or
poor planning, though, farming
here could disappear, Funk
pointed out. He noted one horrible
example, that of Santa Clara
County, California. That region
was formerly one of the finest
fanning areas in the country. The
Santa Clara Chamber of Com
merce, however, promoted the
Itscutn Tuttlaf moto
quite a distance. Unlike most of their earthbound brethren, though, the
birds fled at the approach of a native.
Oren Lee Staley, leader of a national
farmer group, has called on farmers to
reply to the boycotters by holding their
animals off the market.
These threats and counter-threats have
added a considerable measure of un
certaimty to livestock markets here and
across the nation. William McCoy,
president of the Lancaster Stockyards, said
the short-term meat situation has become
an emotional, rather than a supply and
demand, issue. He added that
knowledgeable people in the meat industry
were not surprised at all by the
President’s action.
Livestock prices were on a roller coaster
this week. Locally liveweight hogs hit a
bottom price of 31c per pound, but by
week’s end, hogs were selling again at the
40c mark. Cattle were down $5 from two
weeks ago, and hogs were down about the
same.
McCoy said he’d never seen anything like
the wild swings in the recent livestock
market. He noted that the market should
be strong in cbmmg months, because
supplies are shdrtrAff especially acute
shortage should hit around May and June,
he said, when the yearlings that were
(Continued on Page 22)
$2.00 Per Year
area as an ideal site for
manufacturing. Within 20 years,
over 800,000 people moved into
the county. The demand and the
cost for services far outstripped
the ability to install and pay for
them. Santa Clara County is now
deeply in debt, there’s very little
open space, and the citizens are
disgruntled.
It could happen in Lancaster
County. Funk said he and others
are working to keep it from
happening here. One step that’s
been taken jointly by Lan
caster County Conservation
District and the County Planning
Commission was the preparation
of an overall plan for maintaining
open space within the county.
This plan calls for the
establishment of 10 prime
agricultural areas within the
county, comprising some 300,000
acres of top quality farmlands.
The plan also calls for the
establishment of 16,000 acres of
(Continued on Page 26)