ClO—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 10,1900
McPherson suggests government prune regulations
WASHINGTON, D.C. -
Gail McPherson, York
County farm wife, testified
April 30 during final
bearings on the structure of
agriculture, held at the
USDA building’s Jefferson
Auditorium.
Representing the national
coalition group, American
Agri-Women, the New Park
,R 1 fruit grower drew
comparisons between the
structure of agriculture, as it
relates to government
regulation and risk taking,
and that of an unpruned tree.
"It is supporting the dead,
weak, nuisance limb that do
not produce fruit, and often
interfere with the healthy
ones,” she warned. “Un
controlled, it will grow
rampant, wild, with its fruit
becoming runted, scabby,
insect infested, unfit for
human consumption. ’ ’
Part of a hearing panel,
McPherson stressed that
there isn’t anything
significantly wrong with the
American agriculture
structure in and of itself.
Using the Food Globe
designed by Agriculture
Council of America, an
organization to which AAW
is affiliated, she showed
statistics supporting that
view point; only two percent
of America’s population
produces food for which
consumers spend a smaller
percentage of their
disposable incomes than
anywhere else in the world.
And to top it all, farmers
produce a $l5 billion positive
food trade balance along
with providing U.S. with the
most bountiful, highest
quality food and fiber in the
world.
irsWay-topk^^
Save BIG on Avco New Idea Rakes, Mow/Ditioners,
Cut/Ditioners and big Round Balers during our big
“Haytool Sale Time.” Every New Idea Haytool we
have is on sale at prices you won’t believe! Stop in
and check out our special prices, but hurry ...
our “Haytool Sale Time” ends May 23
CUI/DITIONER
MODEL 279
*4595 *3875
RAKES
MODEL 404 $ | MODEL 402 $1450
CHAS J. McCOMSEY & SONS
RD 3. Oxford. Pa.
Hickory Hill
215-932-2615 IMEWIDEA
It was the contention of
this AAW leader that any
structural problems that
may exist in relation to
agriculture and the entire
free enterprise system
eminate from the govern
ment, “which has allowed
zealous regulators to tamper
with the rights and abilities
of farmers to function in the
role they know best.”
To support the case that
adversary agencies are
turning dirt farmers into
paperwork farmers, Mc-
Pherson listed interferences
from the Department of
Labor, OSHA, the Farm
Labor Contractor
Registration Act, Job Se.
vice, CETA and its
“Operation Outreach”, the
Department of the Interior,
EPA, the Bureau of Land
Management, and even
certain policies of the USDA.
“Because the farmer can’t
pass along his added costs,
he becomes the ultimate
consumer with ever in
creasing pressure from
bureaucratic regulatory
agencies that are forcing his
costs ever higher,” she
stressed.
“You can loan us all the
money in the world, but what
good is it if we can’t pay it
back? And when we can’t,
what will become of our
farms?”
The Pennsylvania peach
grower and grain producer
suggested that if the public
at large were to be made
fully aware of the burden of
all regulations affecting the
agricultural industry, and be
allowed to assess the
complex interrelationships
of these regulations and
MOW/DITIONER
MODEL 299
MODEL 272
ROUND BALER
MODEL 456
their cumulative effects on
the industry, changes would
surely follow.
“Until that is ac
complished, only agriculture
shoulders the full burden,
the full risk for the price of
regulation meant to take
away all risk from the
balance of society and it
self,” she contends. “If it
cannot, then its structure of
ownership, production,
distribution and con
sumption is at stake, as is
the entire economic struc
ture of America it upholds.
The Agri-Woman pleaded
for help to get government
off farmers’ backs.
“Paperwork farmers won’t
ever be as effective as the
dirt fanner,” she asserted.
Men and women everywhere
reap the benefits of their
labors, season after season
in the sun. Those who don’t
believe that will find the
habit of eating hard to break
and paper a poor substitute
for food.”
ELMER J. KING
BUILDER
Box 166,
New Holland, PA
717-354-4740
We build & remodel
all types of farm &
poultry buildings.
A complete line of
dairy equipment
Clay Farm Equip
ment
Describing the work of the
farmer primer, she noted
that he takes out all the dead
limbs, the unproductive
branches, the suckers which
grow only upward and in
Please send me information on: □ Fickes Sifos
□ Please send me color catalog on the Cherokee horse stock trailers and GN flatbeds.
□ Please send me literature on Silo-Matic Feeding Systems.
•7*V.
P.O. Box 7
Newville, PA 17241
Phone: 717-776-3129
Trailers Well Worth Their Cost.
NAME
ADDRESS
CITY
PHONE
terfere with' the productive
limbs. He takes a lot out of
the top to let in the sun,
prunes branches that go off
in all directions then steps
back to look at what’s left.
FICKES SILO COMPANY,
STATE ZIP.
Even if there’s too much
good, he clips that off, too.
Then he knows he’ll have a
productive tree. “Govern
ment could take a lesson,”
McPherson chided.
CSUo-fl&se\
\FEEOINGSYSTCMSy