Presidential Policy Paper No. 4: Farm Policy.

AMERICA'S farmers want and need and deserve--not promises--but more income and more opportunity.

The Democratic answers to these needs include three sets of programs:

--We intend to continue and to improve commodity programs, and to strengthen farm income.

--We intend to assure rural Americans full partnership in the building of the Great Society.

--We intend to increase, wherever we can, the consumer demand for our agricultural products.

We emphasize particularly the importance of the choice farmers have in regard to the commodity program. Farmers can choose our proposal to continue--and to improve-commodity programs, or they can choose to wipe those programs out altogether.

The most careful and responsible studies have shown what would happen if we terminated farm price supports.

First, net farm income throughout the Nation would be cut in half, or by about $6 billion a year. Net farm income in the corn belt alone would drop by $1.8 billion-a devastating blow to the heart of the American economy.

Second, one out of five farmers would be bankrupted.

Third, corn would sell for less than 80 cents a bushel, and wheat for less than a dollar. Soybeans would sell for less than $2 a bushel. It would mean cattle at 17 cents a pound and hogs at 13 cents a pound.

We know from bitter experience that depressions are farm-led and farm-fed. And we are not going to repeat that experience. We propose instead to find in our present feed grains program, our wheat program, and our programs for other commodities those elements which need to be strengthened and improved.

Under these programs:

Gross farm income has averaged $4 billion a year more since 1960 than in the 4 years before 1960.

Net income has averaged $900 million a year higher, or $600 per farm.

But we are open-minded: we want to make these programs work even better.

Our goal is parity of income for the farmer. We are making progress toward it, and we will make more progress by going forward, learning as we go, building on what we have done already.

But parity of income is not enough. Our goal is more than that--it is parity of opportunity for rural America in the broadest meaning of the term.

In the past our farm programs have been designed to improve the economic position of the farmer and to protect against disaster-sudden or otherwise. Now we must aim at preserving and strengthening the structure of the whole rural society, based on the family farm and the rural community that have contributed so much to the American tradition. We must make it possible for young people to spend their lives in the rural communities where they grew up--if they choose to do so--instead of being forced by economic necessity to tear up their roots and go to distant cities.

The development of these community programs must be a partnership enterprise. The rural community itself will provide the leadership. The States have a role to play. And the Federal Government will do its part.

We will work together to make more effective use of our food abundance.

There is no justification for any person in this country going hungry in the midst of plenty. As we win our war against poverty it will mean more customers for America's farm produce.

The food stamp program has worked well. We propose to extend it.

The Food for Peace program is good international policy and it is good economic policy. People who are hungry are weak allies of freedom. We are learning to use food more effectively to promote economic growth. We will broaden this program still further.

One out of every $6 earned by farmers today comes from export markets, and 1 out of 4 acres harvested today produces for markets overseas. Our agricultural exports for dollars climbed last year to $4½ billion--up 20 percent in 1 year--35 percent greater than in 1960, providing critically needed foreign exchange and contributing significantly to national economic progress.

We must continue to improve and build the export market for the family farm. This will take patient negotiation, hard determination, and calm reason in the critical GATT negotiations now underway.

And there is another exciting prospect for agricultural markets that is seldom recognized. Our studies show that if about 80 of the newly developed countries increase their per capita income by just $100 a year-we can double our export market for food.

We look forward to the day when we can rely less on cutbacks, and more on programs to sell abroad all we produce above our own needs. We look forward to the day when our great cooperatives and other private enterprise institutions can perform most of the marketing functions with a minimum of Government involvement.

We all know the difficulties there are in shrinking supply to fit demand. We must get on with the job of stimulating worldwide demand to use our tremendous God-given production.

We are working now, tirelessly and with success, to keep the trade channels to the Common Market and other parts of the world open--and to open new markets.

Rural America must take a leading role in building the Great Society--here and in the world. It was the initiative, the vision, the enterprise of America's farmers that developed our great land frontiers. The same initiative and vision and enterprise will help now in building a better, a more prosperous America.