Statement by the President on Savings Through Reduction of Surplus Stocks of Wheat and Feed Grains.
BECAUSE we have been successful, through our voluntary agriculture programs, in eliminating the burdensome grain surplus that existed in 1961, I was able recently (May 5) to announce a 15 percent increase in the national wheat acreage allotment for the 1967 crop.
Secretary Freeman has noted that this was a historically significant event which signaled the beginning of a new flexibility and adaptiveness in our great agricultural production plan. It demonstrated our ability, under the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, to adjust supply to global and domestic demand. I have instructed Secretary Freeman to look further at this time into the likely supply and demand situation for next year.
Note: The statement was made public as part of a White House release announcing that Orville L. Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, had advised the President that a substantial reduction in U.S. wheat and feed grain stocks between 1961 and 1966 had resulted in savings of about half a million dollars per day in storage and handling charges, and had predicted that storage costs would continue to decline in fiscal year 1967.
"Secretary Freeman told the President," the release added, "that Commodity Credit Corporation's storage and handling costs for all agricultural commodities in fiscal year 1966 are estimated at $238 million--or about $665,000 per day on the average. This compares with a daily average cost of about $1,162,000 in fiscal year 1961, when the total cost for storing and handling commodities reached $427 million.
"Thus annual storage-handling costs for all commodities declined about $189 million between 1961 and 1966. Storage costs of wheat and feed grains declined even more than that, to nearly $200 million. They dropped from $390 million in F.Y. 1961 to an estimated $193 million for the year ending June 30, 1966.
"The Secretary predicted that storage costs will continue to decline in fiscal year 1967 as the full effect of a large surplus draw-down, in recent months, is reflected in the carrying charges on inventory."
The release noted also that the adjustment of wheat and feed grain supplies had had the effect of increasing both current farm prices and the income of grain producers.
For the Presidents May 5 announcement of an increase in wheat acreage allotments, see Item 203.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on Savings Through Reduction of Surplus Stocks of Wheat and Feed Grains. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238694