Chapter 6: Food and Nutrition: 1960-1969

At the outset of the new decade, the Agriculture Committee was chaired by Senator Allen Ellender, a Democrat from Louisiana, who had been at the helm of the Agriculture Committee since the 82nd Congress in 1951, with only a gap in 1953-54 when Republican George Aiken of Vermont chaired the Committee. The Committee in 1960 comprised eleven Democrats and six Republicans. Membership was split geographically between the Central States and the South with six members each, four from the West and one, Senator Aiken of Vermont, from the Eastern United States.

Senator Ellender was to serve as Chairman of the Agriculture and Forestry throughout this entire period of relative stability until Senator Herman Talmadge, a Democrat of Georgia, was elected chairman on January 1971. Committee staff during this and the previous period experienced little turnover. Mr. Cotys M. Mouser, the longest serving Agriculture Committee staffer, began working for the Committee in 1951 and would not leave the Committee's employ until 1974. Beginning the period with seven staff members, the Committee had seven when the decade ended. And everyone who started with the Committee at the beginning of the decade finished the decade with the Committee. (Congressional Staff Directory, 1960, p. 88, and 1970, p. 144).

Yet many old and new issues confronted the Committee. The Congress continued to address resource issues with passage of the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of June 12, 1960 which declared that national forests were to be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, wilderness, wildlife, and fish. In this Act, Congress determined that the Forest Service should balance competing uses. The Act called for attaining the highest practical output from forest resources without impairing the productivity of the land. In enacting this legislation, Congress affirmed established Forest Service policy.

Congress also updated laws dealing with Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) programs in the Consolidated Farmers Home Administration Act of 1961. Its main provision raised the ceilings on farm ownership and farm operating loans; these limits have subsequently been raised a number of times. Subsequent amendments to this Act further expanded these programs in diverse ways, such as by authorizing loans to family farmers to establish farm-based recreational and other nonagricultural enterprises to supplement family income, and by making loans available to associations, whose membership includes family farmers and ranchers.

In the area of rural development, the Agricultural Act of August 8, 1961, subject to more than 20 days of hearings by the Senate Agriculture Committee, opened up participation in the water system program to the general rural population, including incorporated towns up to 2,500 in size. The loan limit on each project was raised for direct loans and insured loans. In 1965, Congress transformed the water facilities loan program into a loan and grant program for both water and waste disposal systems. Rural towns of up to 5,500 were made eligible to be included in FmHA-financed projects and the limit on FmHA financing was increased. These programs also stimulated job growth through assistance to businesses and industries in rural areas.

The Talmadge-Aiken Act, adopted in 1962, was an effort to more closely coordinate federal and state laws that affected the flow of agriculture from the farm gate to the consumer. The law authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to enter into cooperative agreements with States to foster uniform administration of agricultural laws in general. The 1962 law was applied to meat in 1967 with passage of the Wholesome Meat Act, and to poultry the following year with passage of the Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968. These Acts greatly strengthened and updated the 1907 and 1957 laws, improved intrastate inspection, and tightened controls over imported meat products.

The 87th Congress, through the Food and Agriculture Act of 1962, provided a new authority for speeding up resource programs in broad multi-county areas as a basis for economic development. This authority has been used for Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) projects, a program administered by the Soil Conservation Service. RC&D project areas generally larger than a single county, typically encompass 1/4 to 3 million acres. Each project must be large enough to include the resources and related developments that affect its area, but small enough for effective local leadership and speedy development of a project plan. Local sponsors of RC&D projects have included conservation districts, county governing bodies, town, local and State agencies, irrigation districts, public development corporations, and others. These projects are designed to create a base for new jobs and higher incomes, as well as providing for outdoor recreation and countryside beautification. The Resource Conservation and Development Projects-Federal Assistance Act expanded the program again in 1970 by authorizing the Secretary to share costs on certain fish, wildlife and recreation developments.

The Federal role in forestry research was expanded greatly in 1962 by the McIntyre-Stennis Act. Congress recognized the need to establish a program of forest research at the public land-grant colleges. The funding is administered through the agricultural experiment stations, but the Forest Service often provides guidance and coordination to prevent duplication of research efforts. It authorized the Secretary of Agriculture "to cooperate with the several States for the purpose of encouraging and assisting them in carrying out programs of forestry research." This Act authorized appropriations to be distributed to States, on a matching fund basis, for forestry research at land-grant colleges or other State supported institutions that maintained graduate level training in forestry related sciences and which have forestry schools.

However, in addition to expanding forestry research and rural infrastructure, early in 1961, the Kennedy Administration requested emergency feed grain legislation because of on-going grain surpluses. Approved March 22, 1961, the Feed Grain Adjustment Act provided for a voluntary feed grain adjustment program that was successful in reducing feed grain stocks in 1961 and 1962. A voluntary adjustment program also was added to the mandatory marketing quota program for wheat, which, together with favorable export developments, resulted in a substantial reduction of wheat stocks.

Finding resistance to mandatory controls, the Congress, with Administration support, continued the voluntary adjustment program for feed grains and enacted new price-support legislation for cotton and wheat for 1964 and 1965. The 1964 legislation for cotton lowered the level of price support for most producers. The voluntary wheat legislation of 1964 authorized the Commodity Credit Corporation to issue wheat marketing certificates that were to be purchased by the millers and exporters at prices announced by the Secretary of Agriculture. Wheat producers who voluntarily cooperated in the adjustment program received marketing certificates for about 40 percent of normal production on their allotted acres. Income from the sale of the certificates supplemented farm income from the market sales of wheat. The Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 extended most price-support and adjustment programs for a four year period with relatively few changes, except for cotton. Tobacco, peanuts, and rice remained under strict acreage controls. This Act was extended an additional year in 1968.

The significance of the several measures enacted in the early- to mid-1960s was that for the first time they separated income support from price support. Government price support loans were set at or near world price levels, rather than higher levels as in earlier years, in an attempt to keep U.S. prices competitive. In addition, direct payments for acreage diversion provided income support to farmers.

The commodity program would eventually be eclipsed by the food stamp program, which had operated on a pilot basis from 1939 to 1943 and again beginning in fiscal 1961. The program received ongoing authority under the Food Stamp Act of 1964. The new food stamp law enabled low-income families to use coupons in retail stores to purchase a more varied and nutritionally adequate diet than available through the receipt of donated commodities. In 1965, food stamps were a $60 million program serving fewer than half a million clients. During the late 1960s and 1970s, however, hunger lobby groups and their allies in the Congress made expanded food assistance a top priority. During this time, food stamps and other food programs grew rapidly.

After national interest in hunger and poverty problems intensified during the 1960s, there was an explosion of new laws expanding Federal support for child nutrition. The first major child feeding law during this period was the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 which created a school breakfast program, offered schools support for food service equipment, specifically authorized a special milk program (first initiated in 1954) and provided States with administrative funding. In 1968, special meal programs for children in day care centers and summer camps were authorized.

In 1960, the Committee held a single hearing on nutrition programs, focusing on the special school milk program. During the 91st Congress in 1969, by contrast, the Committee held seven days of hearings on food stamps, school lunch and child nutrition programs. With price and income support controls moving toward voluntary involvement and more nutrition programs, the focus of the Agriculture Committee was moving toward social programs focused on urban America. But problems surrounding farmers' ability to make a living in rural America would continue to confront the Committee.

It was at this time that the Committee was dominated most completely by Southern Senators. In addition to Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, southerners chaired all five of the Subcommittees with Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi chairing the Subcommittee on Soil Conservation and Forestry; Senator Spessard L. Holland of Florida chairing the Subcommittee on Agricultural Production, Marketing and Stabilization of Prices; Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia chairing the Subcommittee on Agricultural Credit and Rural Electrification; Senator B. Everett Jordan of North Carolina chairing the Subcommittee on Agricultural Research and General Legislation; and finally, Senator Talmadge also chairing the Special Subcommittee on Watershed Projects. One newcomer to the Committee in 1969 was Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. By the 91st Congress in 1969, the thirteen Committee members were diverse but dominated by Southerners as a result of the Committee and Subcommittee Chairmanships. Six Senators hailed from the South, four from the West, two from the Central States, and one, Senator George Aiken of Vermont represented the East.

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