To reach this goal, deep-seated problems must be subjected to a stepped-up attack.  There is no single easy solution.  Rather, there must be a many-sided assault on the stubborn problems of surpluses, prices, costs, and markets; and a steady, persistent, imaginative advance in the relationship between farmers and their government.

In a few days, by special message, I shall lay before the Congress my detailed recommendations for new steps that should be taken promptly to speed the transition in agriculture and thus assist our farmers to achieve their fair share of the national income.

Basic to this program will be a new attack on the surplus problem-for even the best-conceived farm program cannot work under a multi-billion dollar weight of accumulated stocks.

I shall urge authorization of a soil bank program to alleviate the problem of diverted acres and an overexpanded agricultural plant.  This will include an acreage reserve to reduce current and accumulated surpluses of crops in most serious difficulty, and a conservation reserve to achieve other needed adjustments in the use of agricultural resources.  I shall urge measures to strengthen our surplus disposal activities.

I shall propose measures to strengthen individual commodity programs, to remove controls where possible, to reduce carryovers, and to stop further accumulations of surpluses.  I shall ask the Congress to provide substantial new funds for an expanded drive on the research front, to develop new markets, new crops, and new uses.  The Rural Development Program to better the lot of low-income farm families deserves full Congressional support.  The Great Plains Program must go forward vigorously.  Advances on these and other fronts will pull down the pricedepressing surpluses and raise farm income.

In this time of testing in agriculture, we should all together, regardless of party, carry forward resolutely with a sound and forward looking program on which farm people may confidently depend, now and for years to come.

I shall briefly mention four other subjects directly related to the well-being of the economy, preliminary to their fuller discussion in the Economic Report and later communications.

Resources Conservation

I wish to re-emphasize the critical importance of the wise use and conservation of our great natural resources of land, forests, minerals and water and their long-range development consistent with our agricultural policy.  Water in particular now plays an increasing role in industrial processes, in the irrigation of land, in electric power, as well as in domestic uses.  At the same time, it has the potential of damage and disaster.