March 4, 1968
Page 5019
ON THE SUGAR BEET CROP IN MAINE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, potato farmers in Maine's Aroostook County have for many years been threatened by economic crisis because of the fluctuating prices of potatoes.
Today, these farmers have a new opportunity for stabilizing their businesses and the economy of their county. That opportunity is a second crop in sugar beets.
In the the New York Times of February 12, Reporter Robert Metz describes how Mr. Luman Mahaney quickly seized the opportunity of converting part of his acreage to sugar beets, and how this decision is paying off.
Because of the importance of this opportunity to other farmers in Aroostook County, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Metz' article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
POTATO FARMER FINDS SWEETNESS IN ADVERSITY – WHEN MAINE TUBERS FAIL, HE SWINGS TO SUGAR BEETS – NEW CROP PUTS HIM IN BLACK
(By Robert Metz)
Luman Mahaney is a small business man. He's not only small, he's economically weak. He's so weak that on more than one occasion in recent years, it seemed the stocky, sunbrowned down-Easter might face serious financial difficulties.
Some of his neighbors have even walked the dusty road to bankruptcy in recent hard times.
Mr. Mahaney – like the others – is weak, even though he is good at his trade. But he has little flexibility. In his topsy-turvy world, when he sells more goods, the price comes down and trims, even wipes out his profits – and then some.
Luman is a Maine potato farmer caught in a tide of changing markets that has backed the potato state against the wall. His problems illustrate the dilemma faced by every small-business man in. periods of changing tastes and technology.
As for the Maine potato, Mr. Mahaney believes it is second to none. Any one who has watched the women – mostly farmers' wives – at the Easton, Me., processing plant operated by Vahlsing, Inc., hand-pick the best of the crop for the supermarkets, will tend to agree.
But the underlying reason for the excellence of the Maine potato is men like Lumen who plant the crop and laboriously cultivate it through Maine's short growing season.
It is a labor of the generations for the Maine farmers of northern Aroostook County where the state's most highly cultivated acres lie. In the past, the potato has been good to the Maine farmer and the signs of former prosperity are still apparent.
Lumen's beautifully kept home symbolizes this recent era of middle-class comfort. The white frame house is dominated by bow windows on one side which are rimmed with a rich growth of ivy near the portal.
The well-tended grounds and a multitude of flowers in the spring bespeak good husbandry at home, as well as in the fields. While many city children of the same age as Mr. Mahaney's children have been denied college for lack of means, the prosperous potato years helped send Luman's daughter Carolyn to Germany for studies toward a Ph. D. degree.
Another daughter, Barbara, has an advanced degree and is a teacher in Maine. Luman's son, Gerald, attended the University of Maine – like the two sisters – and is a farmer like his father. A third daughter, Brenda, is married and lives in Bangor.
But the college expenses were financed by money put aside in the good years for potatoes. And the potato is no longer the key to prosperity – quite the contrary.
This last growing season, Maine lost an estimated $50 million on the potato crop and many of the state's banks have groaned under the strain of extended loans and defaults. Potato prices are the lowest in the history of the state relative to growing costs.
Why are Luman and fellow potato growers in the doldrums? Chalk it up to a revolution in potato marketing. Back in the late 1950s, Maine potatoes dominated the market east of the Mississippi River.
Now the markets are localized over much of the country. Several States whose markets were once dominated by Maine potatoes, produce much of their own tubers.
Sagging fertility has also cut Maine yields and the state is now 13th in the nation in potatoes produced per acre.
Moreover, the American consumer has added to potato farmers' headaches. For a number of years – beginning around 1950 – weight-conscious Americans shunned potatoes in an effort to trim waistlines.
In that decade, potato-shy consumers ate an average of 196 pounds of potatoes a year. There were no processed potatoes in those days. Now, fresh potato consumption, according to official figures, is down to 67 pounds a person annually. While consumption of processed potatoes has spurted to a healthy 37 pounds a person, Maine does not share in this market to a significant degree.
Thus, dwindling markets and changing tastes have taken their toll. And, unlike farmers with many crops, the Maine grower does not live off the land.
As Luman puts it:
"My living expenses are the same as anyone else's. I buy everything as do most of the farmers here. I don't raise anything for the table. No butter, eggs, chickens ... Everything comes from the store."
Just how serious the situation has become is clear after an examination of Mr. Mehaney's costs in raising potatoes and the market price they bring.
In the last season, Luman spent $2.60 to grow and harvest each barrel of potatoes – including, among other things, fertilizer, insect spray, seed, tractor fuel and maintenance, picker wages and storage costs.
But the price has been significantly lower than that. No. 1 – best quality – potatoes brought $1.50 to $1.75 a barrel in the open market. "If you get a marketing slip for $1,75, you would probably get closer to $1.40 a barrel because small and misshapen potatoes are mixed in. They discount for that," one farmer commented.
Meanwhile, the market has slumped even lower to approximately a dollar a barrel. Multiply a loss of at least $1 a barrel by the 10,600 barrels of potatoes Mr. Mahaney grew in 1967 and you see what he and his fellow farmers are up against.
And yet, in a good year when the potatoes are relatively scarce, Luman can lay aside thousands of dollars. Further, frozen potato processors will guarantee a price well above cost to farmers who commit part of their crops before weather and market conditions determine whether the crop year will produce a windfall or a disaster.
Meanwhile, Lumen's costs go on in good and bad years. Mr. Mahaney refused to discuss his income, but his living costs can be accurately estimated.
A family of four spends $9,250 in Portland to maintain a moderate living standard while a similar non-urban family in the Northeast United States spends $9,000.
Maine farmers have to borrow their way out of deficit years and hope for better times. And better times are clearly on the way.
Years ago, the outcry over the Maine farmers' plight has begun to reach the highest quarters of Government. Maine clearly needed another cash crop if the farmer – and the state's banks – were to avoid bankruptcy.
At this juncture, Luman and other Maine farmers are happily preparing to plant their third crop of sugar beets which have proved profitable enough to change the atmosphere in Aroostook County from one of gloom to one of rising hope.
Unlike the early beet crops that were of indifferent quality, the latest sugar beets compared with the best anywhere. A state-inspired sugar mill built for $15-million with Wall Street's help and raised by Maine Sugar Industries, Inc., has operated flawlessly to turn the bulging roots into crystal pure sugar and has solved the problem of manufacture for market.
The Maine farmers are so pleased with the results of the latest crop that they are preparing in many instances to triple their acreage. That says a lot in a land of taciturn, hard-to-convince Yankees.
Optimists say that between 40,000 and 50,000 acres will be planted this year, compared with 10,000 last year.
Luman's own experience with sugar beets will illustrate why they are enthusiastic. First of all, he does not face an uncertain market – he can produce as many beets as he wants knowing the sugar will bring 10 cents a pound.
The price trend, generally speaking, has been up because the domestic sugar growers are not producing enough sugar to meet Government-stipulated allotments.
As one expert comments, "There is not a chance in the world that Maine sugar growers will meet with a cost-price squeeze in the future – given normal economic conditions."
Mr. Mahaney raised sugar beets last growing season at a cost of $170 an acre. He got back a total of $308 an acre.
He raised 14.7 acres of the beets last season and is enthusiastically planning to double his acreage this coming season. His profit on beets was just over $2,000.
Unlike many of his fellow farmers who have gone slowly in moving to beets as a second crop, Luman has taken to beets naturally. "They had no difficulty persuading me to plant beets. I think they are adapted to the soil and we need another cash crop. I don't expect to lose money every year on potatoes – even now a good potato year can bring the farmer thousands of dollars of profits – and will continue to produce them. But it's worthwhile to utilize more of our good land for another cash crop with a better market."
For many of Maine's hard-pressed farmers, the beets have meant the difference between a future on the land they love and a move away from the land to the regular paychecks available in the city.