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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (July 5, 1961)
! Wednesday, July 5, 1961 Summer Nebraskan Page 3 nni """JIB JL Continued From Page I) story you aeed go only 50 miles to the south to the University of Nebraska's Col lege of Agriculture in Lin coln. Both the supply and , de mand for agriculture prod-' . ucts are what economists call "inelastic." According to Dr. Howard Ottoson, University agricul tural economist, the p r i c e elasticity of demand for all agricultural products has been, estimated at somewhere between "-.1 and .2." This simply means that every time the price of corn or sorghum, for example, de creases one per cent, people will want to buy only one to two-tenths of a percent more of these feed grains. Actually Americans will eat just so much of certain types of food no matter how much the price of this food rises or falls. Or as Dr. Ottoson puts it: "Inelasticity of d e ra a n d occurs simply because of the lack of stretch in the typical American stomach. When the price of food goes down, wt are not apt to eat many more calories. We are more apt to think about a new car or a motor boat, or a trip to the mountains." Ag Products Inelastic The supply of agriculture products have this same in elastic quality. During the year farmers will raise about the same amount even though the prices may fall. According to Ottoson, the elasticity of supply is less than .2 for all food products for the short run (one sea son). This means that as the prices go down one per cent, ' farmers will decrease their production by only two-tenths of a per cent. So, when these two eco nomic freaks . . . inelastic supply and inelastic demand .... are put together, they cause great big fluctuations in the prices farmers receive for their products, even though the difference in sup ply may not be too great. Ottoson says that in 1959, for example, the additional five per cent of products that were fed into the mar ket, caused a 20 per cent . drop in prices. .Thus agricul ture's supply and demand structure is completely oppo site from most other indus tries where prices can be kept relatively stable through an elastic supply to Microfilm, (Continued From Page 1) cannot be checked out except by faculty members and occa sionally student teachers. The library does provide four sets of earphones for each record disk so that 12 students can listen to records at one time. A GOOD TEACHERS AGCNTY DAVIS School Service ENROLL NOV. E$toblihd 1918 Serving the Mi ouri Volley to the Weit Coost. 529 Stuort Bldg. Lincoln 8, Nebr. quervtms V town & campus 1229 R STREET 7th Annual , uly Starts July 5th DRESSES COATS RAINWEAR SPORTSWEAR SIZES 6 thru 16 Vo have our famous "RIDICULOUS RACK" Unbelievable buys on fashions from oil parrs of the store. TAKE A PEEK IN OUR i V, STORE ANYTIME, WHETHER YOU BUY 11616 meet the fluctuating demand of their products. Stethoscope Tells Story In 1961 a stethoscope ap plied to the nation's bread basket finds these sources for the surplus headache; more powerful and efficient ma chinery, fertilizer, irrigation, population variations, arfd changes in eating habits. They add up to a million-dollar migraine, even in Dodge County. Will today's headache turn into a cerebral hemorrhage, or an old-fashioned stomach ache, so familiar to the pio neers of Dodge County? About technocracy, Dodge County's implement deal er Froid predicts: "There will be more automation in hydraulics in tractors. This means there will be less fa tigue, for the operators, and thus they will be able to farm more per person." Hit other predictions t Wheat farmers will work only 100 hours per year, more tractor horsepower, more conveniences, mere speeds forward on machines, and more efficiency. And the general manager of a hybrid seed corn plant in Fremont, W. A. Koepplin, feels that Dodge County, as well as the rest of Nebraska, "hasn't anywhere reached maximum corn production." He says: "Yields could improve an other 50 per cent on the av erage with fertilizer and irri gation. "Production will be .in creased 10 to 15 per cent by insect control, and from 15 to 25 per cent by the use of herbicides. "Farmers will use 500 times as much fertilizer as they use now." More predictions can be had at the University Agriculture College. Prof. Lloyd W. Hurl but, president of the Ameri can Society of . Agricultural Engineers, the chairman of the department of agricultur al engineering at the Univer sity of Nebraska, says that patterns of specialization are already appearing. He said that a company was formed in western Ne braska for the purpose of feeding 50,000 beef cattle a year. The company plans to , employ 50 people, including a bookkeeper, several secre taries, a veterinarian, and a feed technologist. The long Microcards, Records at Love Library Miss Moore said that on their heaviest day about 60 students patronized the de partment. Most users of the facilities are music and grad uate students, she said. Another service . of the j library is the making of re ! productions of reading matter and occasional pnotograpns. Copies made by a heat proc ess, Thermofax are avail able for 15 cents each. Verifax copies, which are more permanent cost 25 cents. The library has another ma- Sale 9:00 a.m. Reduced 25 TO 50 I OR NOT. Cure term plans include slaughter-, Ing facilities. . . What is going to happen to future population? In the nation's capital, the USDA says there will be 210 to 215 million people in the United States by 1975 and 370 million by 2010. In other words, there will be a little over 2.2 times as many peo ple in the United States 50 years from now as there were in 1956. This means that if Dodge County keeps up with the national average it will have over 70,000 peo ple in the year 2010. And will American's eating habits continue to change? The USDA says people will be eating higher-cost foods such as meats, milk, and certain fruits and veget ables that tend to upgrade the diet but add nothing to the number of pounds of food or number of calories that will be consumed per person. The per person use of farm products will rise only one tenth. Will there be a shortage of food as the population ex plodes? While there will be a pop ulation increase of 43 per cent by 1975, the acres under -cultivation can be increased by 37 percent, according to Howard W. Ottoson, chair man of the University of Ne braska agricultural econom ics department. He said that it has also been shown that if farmers pushed fertilizer to optimum levels of use, there would be a need for one million fewer acres of corn by 1975. And the possibility of fu ture crop yields? The USDA predicts that corn will yield 57 bushels per acre in 1975, and 85 bush els per acre" by 2010. This compares to 47.1 bushels per acre in 1957. Wheat also will increase from" the present 21.7 to 34 bushels per acre 50 years from now. Can Dodge County farmers and their grain belt counter parts feed the exploding pop ulation, at least in the 20th century? Yes, many experts agree. There's land and fertilizer aplenty and technocracy is on the march. But what about that mi graine of the moment? Kennedy Remedy? What has the Kennedy ad ministration proposed as a remedy for the headache? L - V . $ U Fur- 1 .1 i i - It !S At. ZZ.. f m ': . l. WHITMAN RARITIES Charles E. Fein berg of Detroit presented two rare proof sheets of writings of Walt Whitman to the University of Nebraska Libraries. Shown chine which makes copies from microfilm. These copies also cost 15 cents each. Get First Chance Farley said that these facil ities are available to all, but Need Extra Nebraskan Want Ads S cents a word: $1.00 mini mum. Ads to be printed in the classified section of the Summer Nebraskan must be accompanied by the name of the person placinr said ad and brourht to room 311, Burnett. Money? or s' It" iTt I 13 TALL CORN MORE SURPLUS The Midwest's excellent , growing conditions and technocracy in the form of better fertilizers, irrigation, and superiod hybrid Only a short time ago the Emergency Feed Grain Pro- gram was enacted to- tem- porarily ease the paimof the surplus headache. According to Ralph Cole, the new program will not only stop future pile-up of surpluses, but will also elimi- 'A if i:i-.4"V- . rpppivin thpm if n v- 1 - it ' ' 'If Lundy, director of Libraries; Karl Sha piro; Mr. Feinberg; and Dr. James Mil ler, Jr.. (U. of N. Photo.) that University of Nebraska students and faculty are the first users. "Our students get the first call on all materials," he said. "We're here to serve them." After the approximately 8,000 students and faculty mem bers, come about 300 city bor rowers. These are doctors, lawyers, and teachers w.ho need the library for their pro fessional work. How's your average? We're talking about your bat ling average. Viant to find out? Come our to . . . LITTLE AMERICA baseball batting RANGE NORTH Oiily a '5', 0 seeds have combined to produce this lush stand of corn which seems well on its way to adding to the already bulging storage bins. nate some of the present feed grain surpluses. Cole is a member of the Feed Grains Study Commit- tee after .whose recommen- dations the Emergency Feed Grain Program was pat- terned. He explained that under ir are: (from left) Frank Students from other colleges cannot have Love Library cards, but through a system of inter-library loan, a student from Wesleyan or Union col lege could have his library borrow the book for him from Love Library. The inter library loan system enables the University to have access to all major newspapers and to books in other libraries in the United States. Golf. Driving Range ' Shufflsboard Courts 3 if 0 i Snack Bar ;. Ice Cream 27TH ST. ID rainKiiier the program, farmers will cut back on the amount of feed grains that they pro- duce by retiring up to a maximum amount of 40 per- cent of their crop. This amount will be based on their past two-year average acreage. The , land retire- 1 ytaE MAN A W W If L U KM' IMS UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN 1127 "R" Street Phone HE 2-2042 4 ? ment will in turn decrease the supply of certain feed grain crops, primarily corn and sorghum. To make sure production on the remaining unretired acres isn't increased above normal by the addition of fertilizer or other factors, payments will be made OiJy for the past average yields per acre. According to Cole, the present surpluses can also be decreased through payment-in-kind. The farmers can receive part or all of their payment for retiring their acres in surplus corn or sorghum. This will be done by issuing certificates which in turn can be re deemed at the Agriculture s Stabilization and Conserva tion office for corn and sor ghum. . The, new program, it it hoped, will stabilize the sup ply of feed grains for the coning year so that it will meet demand and thus re duce fluctuating prices. Permanent Remedy? And what about a more permanent remedy? In a speech before Congress on March 16th, President John Kennedy said that agricul ture "needs a commodity by-commodity approach, fit ting each program to the pertinent problems." To do so, Mr. Kennedy said, "I am therefore ask ing the Congress to enact legislation to be submitted shortly and to be known as the Agricultural Enabling Amendments Act of 1961. . ." The act was recently killed in committee. However, Washington observers ex pect at least parts of it to be revived into some kind of a farm program. As for the permanent remedy, President Kennedy concluded in his speech be fore Congress: "We cannot expect to solve the farm problem in a day or in a year, or per haps even in this adminis tration. But we can and must adopt a new approach based on a clear recognition of the goals we seek, a realistic appraisal of the problems involved, and a firm deter mination to solve these prob lems and attain these goals." And in Dodge County, Ne braska, the Midwest? The headache throbs, now to the rythm of combines as the wheat harvest commences. h I V ! 6 r 'I I f. , i I - i i.