Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the Commodity Credit Corporation.

To the Congress of the United States:

I am pleased to transmit to the Congress the Annual Report of the Commodity Credit Corporation for fiscal year 1966.

This Report shows clearly the progress that is being made toward our goal of economic equality for rural America.

Farm surpluses have virtually been eliminated. With the removal of this threat to farm prices, farm income has been strengthened.

Yet the elimination of surpluses poses a new dilemma:

--On the one hand, national and world needs demand a high level of production of food and fiber. With populations soaring and the margin of food supplies growing thinner in many areas of the world, we cannot gamble on the possibility of inadequate stocks.

--On the other hand, farmers who produce supplies in excess of immediate requirements as a national precaution, cannot be expected to bear the cost themselves through depressed farm prices and income.

To increase price protection for farmers in these new circumstances, the Commodity Credit Corporation has recently expanded its price-support loan program.

The price-support loan program has long provided farmers protection against commodity price reductions. Under the program, farmers are able to obtain loans at harvest time, enabling them to withhold their products from the markets until later in the marketing season when prices are more favorable. Loans for this purpose totalled nearly $2 billion in fiscal 1966.

The expansion of the price-support loan program will permit more farmers to keep commodities off the market beyond the current crop season. The commodities will continue to be owned by the farmers, with the government paying the storage costs as part of the Nation's price for maintaining adequate reserves.

By thus drawing further upon the resources of the Commodity Credit Corporation to meet changing conditions, this Nation will be taking another important step toward economic equality for the American farmer.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

July 11, 1967