Los Banos Rotary Club History
Local Engineer Tells Of His Native IraLocal Farmer Cites Agricultural Problems

In an analysis of farm problems and its relationship to our national economy, Randall Fawcett, local farmer and dairyman, Tuesday noon told fellow members of the Rotary Club that the final solution to the problems of agriculture today is not in agriculture itself but in everything we are doing.
Citing the fact that agriculture is America's basic industry and that virtually all other business and industry is primarily based on an agricultural foundation or dependency, Fawcett declared our national thinking is sometimes shortsighted and without too much concern as to our future.

"Generally good times and a higher-than-average standard of living," he said, "has permitted us to perch on a falsely high pedestal accustomed to and demanding whatever we want. It is high time we in this country bring ourselves to the realization that in the United States our proverbial horn of plenty may not actually be as full as we would like to believe Agriculture and all industry and all business must realize that each of us can no longer stand alone or apart.
Defending the very controversial subject of farmer subsidies, Fawcett pointed out that last year agriculture in this country received some $500 million in direct subsidies and support from our government. But in the same period, he said, business and industry received subsidies totaling $1.2 billion Labor received subsidy payments of $250 million in the same period, and our program of veteran payments amounted to a total of $4.5 billion.

"As Americans," Fawcett said, "We like to think of ourselves as a free people and boast of our free enterprise. Yet industry, business, the fishing industry, wool industry, electrical manufacturers, as well as agriculture and many other segments of our national economic seek and receive indirect subsidies in the form of high import taxes—a protection from all competition elsewhere in the world."

As one of America's 3 million farmers who make their living totally from agriculture, Fawcett said he believed any capable American farmer, operating in any given country, can out-produce and out-sell native farmers of such country. Here, by contrast, farming costs are largely predicted on costs of materials, supplies and labor, which are higher than in other countries and steadily climbing. Even at that, he said, American agriculture competes favorably on a unit cost basis with farm products of any other nation in the world.

Commenting briefly on our tax structure, Fawcett pointed out that real property taxes are based on land improvements. Assessed valuations seldom change, except upward, and taxes continue to climb though agriculture, for the past five years, has continued to receive less and less for its products.
"Surpluses?" Fawcett concluded, "they" are a ficitious valuation. We had farm surpluses at the beginning of World War II. Overnight the surpluses were wiped out and farmers urged to speed up production all along the line. Today, with the world so frightened of the atom bomb, just one such bomb would immediately create a shortage of every agricultural commodity."

April 13, 1956

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