AGRICULTURAL RELIEF

655
~ Mr. SEXAUER. You ought to know it better than I do. The dairy
industry 1s, as you know, in much better shape than the rest of agri-
culture, because of that; and because we rather fear for the prosperit
of the dairy industry in the future, with so many other people inten
ested In dairy production, or becoming interested in dairy pro-
duction, we feel that some action is necessary to protect the rest of
agriculture and bring it to a level which will make it prosperous
enough so that producers of other products will not go into the
production of dairy products to the extent that we have an exportable
surplus which will bring about a condition in the dairy industry that
now exists in other departments of agriculture.

We believe that there is a very distinct danger of that happenin
Deducting in t f milk (por ; ke PPENINE.

ting mn terms of milk the exports of milk and milk products
from the imports of milk and milk products, we find there were
imported into the United States last year approximately
1,800,000,000 pounds of milk in foreign products. There was
produced in this country last year 120,000,000,000 pounds of milk.
So that our margin of imports which gives us the protection of the
tariff in this country, such protection as we have, is only about 114
per cent.

The production of milk in the United States increased last year
£,000,000,000 pounds over the previous year; and should the con-
sumption not increase as fast as the production, or should the produc-
tion only increase one-half as fast as production, our imports margin
would be gone and we would be facing the export situation.

Mr. ANprESEN. How long would that take, do you estimate?

Mr. SExauer. That is rather difficult to say. During the last
year in what pretends to be more nearly the grain and hay sections
of New York State, for instance, the county of Cayuga in which I
live, produced $5,000,000 of agricultural products, of which $1,700,000
are dairy products, last year increased their production of dairy
products 38 per cent. The county of Monroe, which is also a small
grain crop and fruit section, increased their production of dairy
products 25 per cent. The sections which are strictly dairying do not
increase so fast.

So that it is rather difficult to state, but with the present prices of
airy products in comparison with prices of other agricultural products
[ venture to say it would only be a year or two, possibly three years,
before that situation will occur, depending somewhat upon the
amount of young stock raised. But inasmuch as the amount of
voung stock raised to-day is much greater than it was a year or two
ago we feel that we are approaching that margin dangerously fast.

Mr. Hope. We have been increasing in dairy production in the
Middle West and grain-growing States. oo

Mr. SExAUER. I believe that is true. I have not the statistics to
bear that out, however. But I do know that the reports we have
received from condensers is that in those sections where they have
established new condensers, such as you men know of in the South and
central South that there is a tremendous interest in dairying, and they
are getting to be mie producers where formerly there was hardly
anything but butter plants. }

{ir Bow I may say that in South Carolina, from which State
[ come, and several other Southern States, they are going into the

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