Nixon, Agnew & Weinberger on Dairy industry and Price supports

2:06Mostly now.
2:08I'm sorry to have to wait, but I have to respect that the treasurer's on the phone.
2:12But there's nothing I can do to talk to him about a matter.
2:17If I would know, and your folks would put me away, I would consider some of it.
2:30Let me start this meeting with one .
2:35I first want to say I am very grateful for the support we have had in this administration from this group.
2:58I know that the Internet and agriculture seems widely recognized.
3:05It comes across all of our organizations.
3:10It's represented by the states.
3:12And I know, too, that you are a group that are politically very conscious, not in any partisan sense, but that you realize that what happens in Washington, not only affecting your business, but affecting the economy, our foreign policy, and the rest, affects you.
3:29And you're willing to do something about it.
3:31And I must say, a lot of businessmen and others that I get around this table yell and yammer and talk a lot, but they don't do anything about it.
3:38And you do, and I appreciate that.
3:41I don't know how to spell it out.
3:42My friend John Utters, he told me just to let you do.
3:46The other thing I would like to say is that I appreciate the fact that this group, the other group, is a general group.
3:56It's somewhat bold.
4:11And this room is, uh, come in as a bedrock, a heartland, as you call it in America.
4:22A heartland.
4:23It's just all over the mountain.
4:24That's it.
4:25That's it.
4:29that you have such a strong deep commitment to what it stands for.
4:37And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
4:59Great statement by Andrew Orchard, his enormously effective job, its productivity, the quality of its product, etc., for American consumers and for that matter.
5:18But beyond that, this group.
5:20also has done a job far, going far beyond trying to do this work for the first time.
5:30So there aren't any people needed in this company today.
5:34And you may think that perhaps you're irrelevant to a small group.
5:39I just want you to know that in this office, we have a kind of commitment and a kind of support of both parties.
5:50Uh, now, regarding another thing, I, I missed your meeting in Chicago, but you were leaving away.
6:01And, uh, I'd like you to make me a message that, uh, I want you to know that I can talk to our, uh, Vice President here at the hospital.
6:12And, uh,
6:13.
6:13As far as .
6:15Anyway, I've been in Chicago .
6:17Next thing will be.
6:39So I miss the other guy very much.
6:44I can't find some kind of authority or something to come to him.
6:49I'd like to.
6:50I think that what you can't do in these meetings each year, a lot of the years from this office, this has been a pretty good year.
6:59It's just not a nice year.
7:01But I'd like to.
7:05I won't talk too long.
7:06I did want to just discuss today some of these general thoughts and some of these things.
7:15So with that introduction, and I throw them all over to Cliff Harding, and to Cliff, he's going to throw it all back across to Cliff.
7:26We're really interested in hearing what your views are.
7:30We've got many decisions in the present time, as you know, on this mystery that we have made regarding the importance and regarding the high school and all the rest.
7:44Oh, maybe I should just make a statement.
7:47I'm not sure where our differences are.
7:49We do have a couple.
7:50I just don't think it's important at all what the facts are or we are on production.
7:57It's something that starts with that situation.
8:02We were involved in both of these races, one that I see all the time.
8:07I've worked with Terry Ray before at one time.
8:10He did so at that time for a good reason.
8:13And we better move.
8:32Well, it did work, or something worked.
8:34The production did increase.
8:36I used to assume to Calvinist and Fred how long it would last, and the facts are that the production is running ahead of what we need to go.
8:48Total consumption last year was up a little, per capita consumption down a bit, and the house that we have to buy was worth the price.
9:00Also, that's a little higher than the past year than the year before.
9:03Now, that's not the real issue.
9:05The real issue is, in my mind,
9:11Whether we dare raise the prices, which eventually results in some increase in retail level, maybe not immediately, because there is an accident, market prices are up towards now.
9:23But there is a point in these agricultural commodities where we don't control supply.
9:31If we go in the hill, where total returns start reducing, it boosts the price up.
9:39And no one can rule whether we're at that point or not.
9:43It's a matter of judgment.
9:44And I think that's where our interest is at the time that we have talked with these men.
9:49This is a time when I think we have to be stable.
9:52We have to look at what's best for the men as well as the...
9:57It's not in the barn.
10:00You can use that little X-ray machine.
10:14But that is what I think we, I'd like to hear what he's trying to pick up to us on the whole point.
10:26That's right, that's right, that's right, that's right, that's right, that's right, that's right, that's right.
10:44So we'd like to know your reasons.
10:46All right.
10:48First, Mr. President, I want to thank all these gentlemen.
10:51I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here.
10:55We know how busy you are, and we appreciate the opportunity to be heard by you.
10:59These gentlemen all know a lot of people with an agricultural thing to do.
11:05Having an agricultural background, they all
11:11What you told me on the dole pan, you talked to me about the fact that your initial collision experience, Congressman, was more of a problem in the agricultural area, and you're aware of the economic importance of agriculture, and you have an unsubstantiated track record of supporting agriculture.
11:32We all know that.
11:34I called her and told her, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote.
11:52We have no moral as to data, and it's strictly a matter of judgment.
11:57We have had an opportunity, believe it's just our views, with the Secretary.
12:02The points, the strategy briefs, the points of which we assume are of concern to you, I wish to face right up to them.
12:13Number one, the bank on consumer prices.
12:17But with the cost of that, the level that we're seeing is really a mark at this time.
12:25And in our view, it looks to involve the increase in consumer prices.
12:31Although we know that it's inevitable, there will be an unprecedented basis to the situation.
12:36There have been some increases in consumer prices, so we've dealt with it.
12:41And of course,
12:44You know, it's more likely to be involved due to inflationary forces, which we are well aware are not pure inflationary forces.
12:53And I'm not going to do this to the knee.
12:56As far as farmers are concerned, I think that's pretty well reviewed.
13:02The milk ratio has been 10 years, the cost of labor, everything that farmers use is involved in production of milk.
13:15It's increasing and increasing and increasing, and they are in a real, real bind.
13:21And it's our view that irreparable harm could result in less actions taken to at least try to save the school.
13:31I know you know as we know that sometimes it's hard to convince a friend that what you're trying to do is good for him, and that's the posture that we've done here.
13:51not sending the support at approximately 85%.
13:57Our figures show Inwood, Resolve, Gemma increase in income for dairy farmers of a half a billion dollars.
14:06And the cost to the government of setting up that picture would be a decrease of 30 to 35 million dollars.
14:17So,
14:20The original thing that we like to use on it is that if you get 20% of the application, you've got $150 million.
14:29And so, in that view, we think that helps the government with the actual cost and application.
14:40Another thing that is of concern to us as your friends is the timeliness of the action.
14:49We all know that sometimes if action is delayed, it's not appreciated as it would be if it's taken in a timely manner.
15:01And that's pretty well...
15:04It's time to see the thing up.
15:07As concise as I know how, insofar as our position.
15:10Let me get this.
15:13This is the real point.
15:14The real point is this.
15:22the question is, how are you going to look a year from now?
15:28Now, does anybody have any other view on this?
15:31This is an analyst's view.
15:32I got some concern that it's been expressed as to whether or not if you go in and you go into 85, you know, the bigger instance, I mean, they're hard, but if he doesn't, what is he going to do in terms of,
15:51of iteration and overproduction.
15:54Isn't that really what you're talking about?
15:56And that, because, what else do you want to say?
16:00The three exactions show, of course, Harold knows he's facing nothing most of the rest of them do around the table.
16:07And this is a great, great concern to us.
16:09Harold, we thought, given their relationship, the sector has the price of water raised, and it had to be reduced in return.
16:19produced because of a big increase in production by about 5 billion pounds in the price that are used in the 3,085-cylinder in 1952 and 3, down to 3,015 since in 1954 and 5, which is a steady, steady production.
16:37The same thing happened again, and when Secretary of the Supreme Court came in, eight years later, the price was raised up to a high of 3.40 in 1961-62.
16:51The production was at a very high of 126 billion pounds, and then the support price had to be dropped back to a low of 3.00, which was probably 29 cents a month.
17:03Well, now, this is the past history.
17:05This is what we're looking at.
17:06If we knew, we wouldn't stimulate milk flow, and it wouldn't go on back up to 120, 22, 23, 24 billion pounds.
17:11I don't think anybody would have any argument as to what we're doing.
17:16But, man, we don't know, and we don't expect people to know either.
17:22I didn't ask for that.
17:23I didn't ask for that.
17:24I said, we're going to get everybody to understand that.
17:28of what the real situation is, because we did have a turnaround.
17:32And I don't think that this is a true turnaround at first, although we have an increase of a billion pounds, because we did have a reduction in cow numbers still last year, and I don't think there'll be a reduction in all of those cows yet, as a result of it.
17:47Really, I think the increase as a result of it
17:51of milder weather in one time, which has quite a lot of blocks to the production of suppressants.
17:57A milder one, it could get much better than a close one if you don't have a very severe one.
18:03The previous one that had been very severe, the last one that was a mild one, and then there's probably better parts and feed and so on.
18:10So there's another thing we can't control.
18:12But we don't know that this is a real turnaround.
18:14We've got to make a conscious decision of where it went to.
18:18So that really is where we're in the dark, and we felt that a little bit more time should be given to find out if this really turned out.
18:30Because we were at the rate of price of about $5, and we traded $4.66.
18:37And we worked, in fact, up to 123 or 4 or 5 billion pounds, what we would have unless the capital consumption increased, unless the increasing population took it up in the marketplace.
18:51The same amount of milk that cost 600 million dollars in 1962 would cost close to a billion dollars because of the difference in the price.
19:00Food was just about five dollars instead of just over three dollars.
19:05And this is not a real term that we have.
19:10This is not a real term on how long.
19:12It's still up for great prices.
19:16All right, we'd like to start.
19:17These organizations, which are at the tailings of my clients, represent about 80,000 dairy producers.
19:22The first thing I had to learn when they came to us was the producer's not the cow, he's the farmer.
19:29So I had to learn a lot since then.
19:32We think that under the base plans which your administration has been so helpful, the Secretary of Defense has been so helpful in promoting, plus the new promotional legislation which permits money to be spent for certain types of promotion, which your administration also enthusiastically supports.
19:52In fact, so far, except for the last week or two, there's been almost nothing that their industry has wanted that this administration has not been raised too drastically for.
20:02The combination of those factors plus the turnaround in the last two quarters for last year, putting the two together, their industry is doing a more effective job than it's ever done before in coal production.
20:17But I suppose as a lawyer in the City Attorney General's seat, I'd have to say that Secretary Campbell is right to this extent.
20:25There's nobody that can absolutely swear in a stack of Bibles and absolutely guarantee that this turnaround might not be permanent.
20:33Because they don't know that.
20:34I lose that for sure.
20:36But the odds are...
20:38but the analysis is the same people who've been right now seven years
20:56that this is not a turnaround.
20:57That's our pretensions.
20:59And we had it right.
21:01I mean, they dressed him, didn't track him.
21:06And this is not a turnaround.
21:09And as the Secretary Campbell pointed out, it is a turnaround in total consumption.
21:16I don't say that's a general argument, but it's okay, sir.
21:22And as Mr. Harris pointed out, we do have a business now that is more about controlling consumption than production with this base plant legislation and this promotion legislation.
21:37Over a six-day period of this organization, we have voluntarily invoked base plans which have demonstrated the ability to take a reduction to the consumers of eats.
21:49Now this new legislation, we deal with each of these other areas, so we have that going for us that we haven't had before.
21:54We have one additional item, which is very close to the Secretary's heart, I'll use a better term, which he says in the end, and that is this promotion legislation.
22:04This room has demonstrated this.
22:05She says the thousand-gallon market represents a very pleasing house of milk.
22:09It's working to save money for a promotion.
22:12And we're now on a program of developing promotional and marketing programs that are tied together, which is the first time this has ever happened.
22:21But if we're going to take the money to do this, we've got to get it at a time when we're at least holding our own and not in a time of falling...
22:31Yeah, one thing about that I just put aside is that the, I don't know what the medical profession, don't really know much about the rest of the world.
22:47If you're feeling more cooperative, don't think about it.
22:51But if you actually last a month and have a heart attack, well, I can think of a lot of other things I'm going to give you, but aren't you lost later?
22:58I said, yeah, yeah.
22:59We'll just have to drink a lot of water.
23:02A lot of breath.
23:05What does the medical profession do in that respect?
23:11The rest probably goes up and down.
23:15There's no age, no hospital.
23:16I'm not sure.
23:17As far as you know, related to stress, you'll have to test maybe one week in your life.
23:23I thought it was normal, but naturally, it just made me feel low, which made me drink.
23:33I think it was the other people who made me feel low.
23:38The organization has wide-expense support from the organization.
23:59Providing research money.
24:01And we're talking about basic research, pure research.
24:05For the first time, with the new, or yes, yes, we are pure research.
24:11And we did this can't help it.
24:13And it was 50 cents.
24:14So what point is it going to be your business going into your promoting?
24:21Everybody's going to get next to you and say, yes, take a sleep at a new service.
24:28It's an article that we need to digest a couple of months ago.
24:35But almost any, any personal studies will tell you there's a problem with anything.
24:47that lack of a pill, I mean, which has side effects, which many times are not like the best thing you can do is a pill.
24:55Any kind, maybe just a glass of wine.
24:57You don't have to talk with it or anything like that.
25:01It could be warm, it could be...
25:03uh, tapping, or even cold pumping too, but it has a certain saluting effect.
25:09And you get started on that.
25:11Well, that's what you get out of my marketing picture today.
25:14I already got that.
25:15I can tell you that the sleep problem is, of course, it's an American psychosis at the moment, and all the fancy psychics who were victims of the American people as adults, uh, at this time, take some form of study
25:32uh now here's here's here's the mouth he's going to work all the time sometimes you see so many problems you're not going to sleep but it's all psychological too because people think of it as well as a sleeping time it's all they did mr president
25:54The difference between $4.66 and $5.00 is just about the ratio point as to whether the average dairy farmer in Oklahoma makes it or doesn't make it.
26:08I believe that I'm as familiar with dairy operations as anybody in the state of Oklahoma.
26:17In fact, all of the farmers over here have had it over all these years.
26:24But where are you neat bunch of people, dairy farmers are?
26:30We started out back when we could just use 10 gallon cans of an old Coober and get by.
26:37But Mr. President, that doesn't exist today.
26:40The inspectors say you have to have tile walls, you don't have to have the latest equipment.
26:46You're talking about, in our loan corporation, I was looking the other day, and our average size loan to dairy farmers today is about $39,000 loan to those people.
26:59And this credit is, but, but, I'm really conscious of this thing because I'm the fellow that approves those loans.
27:08And I can see this gradually growing.
27:12And I can see that Mr. Secretary is
27:15If you give us another dime, would it cost us and not make us any money?
27:22But we have bigger farmers that has to make X amount of dollars, and if he gets a higher price, he'll take those dollars, or if he doesn't get a higher price, he's going to put two and nothing else out there to get them anyway.
27:35So it has both ways.
27:36I can see this one, but he's got to have so many dollars, and it takes more pounds to get it, but he's going to produce so many pounds.
27:45That is on a short amount basis.
27:46Right.
27:47But I'm talking from a...
27:49He's a professional, but I'm talking...
27:53I'm a dairy farmer because that's exactly what I am.
27:55Would you say you would not milk any more cows than necessary?
27:59In other words, you don't milk an extra cow just because you like to?
28:04You're not looking for a job, are you?
28:06I didn't get the point.
28:07What an honest man.
28:09Yeah.
28:10Maybe they get it.
28:12I don't know why I didn't ask you that.
28:14Dairy...
28:15Because of inflation, the necessity of a certain return, an income, he's looking for so much.
28:21He's not melting gross, he's not melting the digital head of the cow just because he has a love for the very cow.
28:29Although he does have a love.
28:32So are you suggesting that the raise in the price in the support is not going to be necessary?
28:38I don't think it will be necessary to increase.
28:41Because we had this judgment.
28:43Yeah, I'm not sure.
28:45I'm sure.
28:46I'm sure.
28:46But...
28:46The reason, you know, what we're going to get down to is psychology.
28:49Psychology.
28:50Psychology.
28:51Isn't it?
28:51In fact, it's a very good thing.
28:52It's a very good thing.
28:55Your judgment on the psychology is likely not true.
29:09where it's about 120 different organizations.
29:13And it's the last two or three years.
29:18I've seen the values are now 120 different board of directors.
29:22We just got together.
29:26Now, as you say, as somebody said, Mary said a while ago that
29:31This administration has been, and we've criticized this, you've been one of the best administrations we've had.
29:39I just want to complain.
29:40I come from the old loose Democrats, as you well know, so I'm just being very frank about it.
29:48And the point here is that all of a sudden we get together, and right and real good,
30:05And, uh, boy, this could be a real terrific blow.
30:07We're trying to get into the decision of self-help.
30:10If we do it, let's go ahead and do it.
30:12But closer to a self-help.
30:13Self-help is to eliminate the, uh, our automatic type of decision of fighting one another.
30:19That's it.
30:20And in the work program, we want to get the position so we can run our own system.
30:25That's the work program.
30:25Just because it's here, I have one.
30:28But we can reach out there and take it now.
30:31It's been talked about before.
30:35And so we get all these organizations together, and here we are, and the costs are still going up, and all of a sudden, these people started looking at us and said, well, what happened here?
30:45What happened?
30:47And then our organization structure, when our organization structure, we can't get all, can't keep on moving towards it, see?
30:54That's why they can't get themselves, and they're making inefficient plans like we're doing right now.
30:59They're throwing sand, right?
31:02Because they don't have value.
31:27Now we put those consolidations together and we say, okay, you were an ex-cooperative and you were running 4% for this plan, and now we're all together, so there's no use in having that plan anymore.
31:39Let's cut that volume over here another time.
31:42So when we do that, then we raise the productivity of our only operability to pay in a cooperative system.
31:50Why are you able to do that now?
31:52Because you've brought the organizations together, right?
31:54One of the organizations, what have they brought together in the last few years?
31:59The last two years.
32:02That's what you achieve.
32:04It's non-spiritual.
32:04You'll be saying, well, I'm sitting all right up here.
32:07That is not true.
32:08The road is not chapped.
32:11Mr. President, I think probably, as far as experience is concerned, I've had a lot of questions.
32:17I hear you.
32:18If there's anyone I'm more afraid of, I'm going to sit down.
32:25And I think I know what Dairy Farmers is thinking, and I think I know what kind of a job it is to get information community to Dairy Farmers.
32:33As has been mentioned here, we have done remarkably well under Dairy's administration again.
32:40general programs, we call it, for an average on promotion.
32:44And the class one base plan.
32:46These plans, we want all of them and we want to put them into force.
32:52But as long as these dairy farmers feel that the price of milk is declining and going down, it's going to be difficult to sell them and use these programs that we already have.
33:01I've worked with the administration, the administration worked with us.
33:07I think that with all due respect to economists, they have overlooked a lot of the things
33:25$4.00 or $100.00 from him, he'll get on the rocks.
33:27But again, it causes people to make another ambiguous occupation because they don't like being salaried.
33:33And unless the individual's dedicated to repairing them, he's not going to stay down that way.
33:38And I'll admit that the increase in price, I mean the increase in production is probably out there, prevails now, and that it's a matter of facts and figures.
33:49Beyond a doubt, I bet it's going to influence things that much.
33:53Experiences won't be a joke, I'm telling you.
33:57Well, another point, Mr. President, is that in the southeast of these areas, they're very conscious that they're caught in this inflation, which is not certainly yours.
34:12And their costs are up, and yet their prices are now, because of the support, are going to be going down.
34:21It will cost them...
34:24Well, they're just going to lose ground, and they're going to be, to put it rudely frank, I'm satisfied they're reborn.
34:32They're not even going out of business.
34:35You're already stopping referring to the Georgians or the South Carolinians.
34:39Kentucky, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee.
34:47And that's a pretty, pretty big deal.
34:50What do we have?
34:54It's approximately about six billion pounds.
34:59We've been marketing here, we've been cooperating for about 14 to 15 billion pounds in Southeast Asia.
35:09And we're satisfied in our judgment, as well as the judgment of the other members of the table, that production isn't going to be, it's not going to be on the increase.
35:22Let me come to the key point.
35:26Supposedly, it doesn't.
35:27What do you think you can do about it?
35:33I think the suppression and the
35:37to take care of this is the self-help
35:52I think it's under the
36:20I wondered what process there was available.
36:40You really mean that you were so well-organized that you think you might be able to get that?
36:46You couldn't have done that, say, like, Mr. Hedger-Metsen.
36:49You don't know that at all.
36:50Mr. Hedger-Metsen, our main partner, thanks for all the things you did.
36:54This is a very important point.
36:56What do you...
36:57This is a new factory that Dr. Camillo says they have now.
37:02Yes, that's correct.
37:04Well, Mr. Secretary, I'd like to take this, but you just take a picture.
37:10I'll take a picture.
37:15Yeah, excuse me, go ahead.
37:18I didn't realize, though, that you really did do this.
37:21I was just going to say, you're talking about this psychology job.
37:26That's really it.
37:27Yes, I was responding.
37:30He was going to go brave it out there.
37:32For example, I didn't.
37:38Well, you know, one of the major causes, one of the major leaders in the infrastructure, the construction trade, I had to take a very hard guess at the end of the day.
37:51All right, it had to be done because they had a 22% increase this past year.
37:57And so these are my good friends who believe in those construction trades.
38:01My old man was a carpenter.
38:02I respect those guys.
38:03They're carpenters.
38:04The names of all of them are good Americans.
38:06They're decent people.
38:07But some of their years went too far in this thing.
38:12They priced themselves off the market.
38:14So now we're getting into Canada.
38:16We're staying up here.
38:18Because what this day has stated, in effect, said to them,
38:22And as far as the government's $14 million worth of contracts is concerned, that we will not be bound by a law passed in 1933.
38:32And that requires us to go to a union contract.
38:37We will go to a non-union contract, particularly union contractors.
38:41It's precious stuff out of the market.
38:43Now, so therefore, it's an enormous wall of humanity.
38:47So what happens is these guys are all sitting down.
38:50The problem they've got, the problem they've got gets back to the psychological problem they've got.
38:57It's not, and I sit around with a delegation of leaders here.
38:59when they got local leaders and others and say, well gee, I can't speak for that fellow, that guy up in New York, a student counselor, that fellow in Kansas City, Kansas City on the student council, the Chicago one, the Omaha one.
39:10Now the real question that I'm asking here, this is quite fundamental, is
39:15whether you follow this policy, that you've got that kind of cooperation.
39:20Do you want to talk about that?
39:22Yes, I think we're looking at areas in this group of about 20 states, and most of the heavy gun production areas, I guess, except down on the West Coast.
39:32They're part of your organization, aren't they?
39:34They're not.
39:35Not yet.
39:35Not yet.
39:54The psychology that you're talking about...
40:14It is important, and it's on the organizational strategy that we now have, plus what is on the drawing board for continuing this consolidation movement, that we can be spread of this psychology as far as the very primers are concerned.
40:29We have this authority as far as the classical debates are concerned.
40:33You can be honest.
40:35The other thing that's going on in the non-grade A segment of this dairy industry is that we have standards that are being imposed on these dairy farmers at the farm where they're not going to be able to produce milk at the barnyard under a change rate.
40:51So they're going to have to make a decision, many of these single cow, 15 cow operations.
40:58whether they're going to be adherent or not on these standards are opposed.
41:01And many of them are going to get out.
41:03They're going to say, my age is such that every day until I'm 56.
41:06I said, you're just going to get out of that.
41:10I mean, it's just like a real capsule.
41:12You ask a question.
41:14Can we have the organization put base plans in?
41:17The big challenge here is, if you challenge us, you say, yes, we're into this idea of the price.
41:25At the same time, you take us over to production, but the goal is to talk to us and say, well, too, the answer is unqualified.
41:32Yes, we're here anyway.
41:34immediately, with the cooperation of the administration, we were able to get a plan from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico and out to the middle part of the 200-plus desalination so that we got the capability to do it.
41:48I just demonstrated to the Vice President that I already did it.
41:51Well, you couldn't say that our ability to do this in six states plus the states that he just referred to.
41:58And you may wonder, well, how do you tell farmers on this idea?
42:02Number one, because it works, it's in their best interest.
42:04Number two, this space immediately becomes worth money to them.
42:08The base that they hold.
42:10They increase their capital worth.
42:13So there's a little bit of a struggle there.
42:18He's created value by government orders.
42:20Well, that's, uh, it's a, it's a, uh, not that we, we, well, you guys say that, but of course we've had, you know, in these states we're talking about now without government orders, but in regulated areas where the government, uh, has, uh, we have federal orders.
42:34And, uh, that's it.
42:37I think that we represent a
42:54Mr. President, I'd like to make a point, I think, as I mentioned here, in regards to the relationship between the 50s and the very offensive administration.
43:22kind of situation then as compared to today.
43:26At that time, there was quite a potential of milk in the country that wasn't being marketed.
43:32And that potential is almost nil today.
43:35So that the price structure will not act the same as the collection as it did at that time because there was a non-market of milk, a trading market, where that price
43:46situation at that time.
43:47And the cow numbers today are the lowest in almost a century.
43:52And if you want to move that production up, you take the cows, and if you want to avoid that, you go back to the two-year-old business that you have now.
44:00That's right.
44:02They replaced it.
44:03I'll tell you about this.
44:05Going into the dairy business,
44:07How big of an operation is it?
44:10It's a hike out of the wagon.
44:12That's right.
44:12But as much as a lot of these dairy farmers talk about that, what about that?
44:16It's a very expensive business to get into in Washington.
44:19In other words, if somebody's got a treasury, you've got people in the business.
44:23The question is, what can they do to advise you?
44:27What about somebody going into the business?
44:31What does it cost?
44:32Is it a payday?
44:32$100,000?
44:32It's more than $100,000.
44:35It's not a business that can be expensable, particularly by new people coming in.
44:44There's no longer exists.
44:46One more point that I would like to bring out
45:06In practice, what you said is the very beginning of who came to the room, and that is the philosophy of living in our rural communities.
45:14Basically, Mr. President, I'm from Iowa, and as you drive along the road, you see farmstead after farmstead empty, all these different areas, these changing times, and the emphasis on the farmstead has been to the urban areas.
45:30We want to, not through subsidies or anything else, but investing with our own self-help to preserve this way of life out there because this is really where the, as you said, the rock-ribbed heritage, the religious heritage, is there.
45:46And I live in that country, and I love it, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
45:50But we want to preserve it.
45:52And we need his help to preserve it.
45:54This is very, very important for this time.
45:57I want to preserve this.
45:59I don't think that's important.
46:03I think that's important.
46:05It's a lot more important spiritually.
46:08I think you're spiritually in the broadest sense.
46:13In numbers, you know that.
46:15Cities are all around people, places they are not.
46:18But I think that you show me in that way that this is a rural heartland, which sometimes inevitably, it almost always falls and loses its character.
46:32And I think that's exactly what you need.
46:42I mean, this is solid.
46:44Well, the new run here basically is now in the center.
46:47Not an evil coaster.
46:49A coaster, though, in a sense.
46:51Because the center's empty now.
46:54Now we have to find ways not only to see that, we have all the parks out there.
47:00Ways that we can have.
47:03Well, that's what I think.
47:05That's very good.
47:19Well, I appreciate this chance to talk to you, and I always try to distinguish true content and give it a little mental.
47:27Today, we're going to hear you in the classroom.
47:31I have some presidential compliments.
47:35I'm going to move over here and introduce you to the presidential seal.
47:45It doesn't have any president's name on it, so you can wear it wherever you are.
47:54And this, since your wives will wonder where you really were today.
48:02You can, it's a little bow that she can wear, and she likes them.
48:07The first time she's seen them.
48:10They're rather nice and old.
48:15I think the main point about them is they look more expensive than they are.
48:21You know the old story is that your children are trying to remember the school, and the kings and emperors only give gifts of gold.
48:32Well, these are not gold, but only presidents can give them.
48:36Thank you very much.
48:38Mr. President, one thing you didn't respond to was your statement that you said you'd try to make it, and I'm sure you're here today with me, and you want to attend our next meeting.
48:50We're looking forward to your being there, and we'll tell you now, we'll have 35 hours.
48:56We're going to cut production.
49:15Secretary, do you want me to have both of you speak to them?
49:26Thank you.
49:28Thank you.
49:31Thank you.
49:32Thank you.
49:33Thank you.
49:34Thank you.
49:35Thank you.

Nixon, Agnew & Weinberger on Dairy industry and Price supports

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 23, 1971

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