 Today, on A Better Way, we'll have a food price outlook for the months ahead and offer some suggestions on managing your food budget in 1980. We'll take a look at how the telephone, presently and in the future, can help to conserve energy. And Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland will comment on the future economic and social structure of American agriculture. For our young viewers, we'll look at soil, the foundation of life. Nuts are not only tasty but nutritious. We'll offer some tips on using them in your family meals. Finally, we'll visit a U.S. trade fair in Japan, next on A Better Way. Most of us are acutely aware of inflation every time we go through the checkout line at the grocery store. For an idea of what we can expect in the way of food prices in 1980, Larry Quinn has this report. Inflation will continue to be a major concern for consumers in the year ahead. Food prices will average about 11 percent higher in 1979 than they were in 1978. That's about the same as the general inflation rate for the year. With us to take a look at food prices in the year ahead is Dawson A. Halter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dawson is chairman of the World Food and Agricultural Outlook and Situation Board. And Dawson, as we begin to think and look about, look at 1980, what do you see for food prices? Larry, we see the inflationary pressures that are permeating our economy, pushing up the cost of food at the retail counter in 1980. We expect food prices in the year ahead to average somewhere between 7 and 11 percent higher than they did in the current year. Most of that increase will be due to inflation itself as it pushes up the cost of processing and marketing food after it leaves the farm gate. What will account for most of those food costs? You said inflationary factors, but will farm prices increase that much? Will it be marketing costs? What will? The main source of the increase will be increased marketing costs. The largest component there is labor, but higher prices for energy, packaging, transportation, all of the cost of moving food after it leaves the farm gets added in and is going to be the main source of the increase as we look at the year ahead. What about the pattern of food price increases for this coming year? Will we see about the same as we've had this past year or will it be somewhat different? At this stage we look for a much different pattern in 1980. Right now we are seeing record levels of pork and poultry production. We expect that pattern to continue into next year running at very large levels through the first half of the year. Thus consumers should be able to get very good buys on those products in the first half of the year while in the second half by that time producers having been squeezed by the inflationary pressures that are above their returns will have made adjustments and meat supplies will perhaps be much tighter in the second half of the year. Perhaps a consumer will be filling up their freezers with meat during the first six months of the year. I believe that would be a good strategy for consumers to follow particularly with purchases of pork and poultry meat in the first half of 1980. What about the red meats? What do you see there for 1980? Beef prices will average higher in the year ahead. Supplies will be about as large as they have been in 1979. But we don't expect to see as much of an increase in beef as we do in pork and poultry. Let's talk about a couple of other basics that of milk and eggs. What do you see there? Eggs should continue to be a good buy next year based on our supply prospects at this stage. However, dairy products are going to continue to go up perhaps not much different than the overall rate of inflation. Breads and cereals? Breads and cereals will increase roughly in line with the overall rate of inflation because those products are highly processed and labor packaging costs get built in to those items as they move to the retail counter. What about fruits and vegetables? Fruits and vegetables have been a good buy this fall because we've generally had good crops. We're having our record citrus crop coming on, lots of oranges coming out of Florida this season. So we expect particularly the fruit crop to be quite large and some pretty good buys in some of those products. What about vegetables? Fruits and vegetables have something like oils and sweeteners that we all use. The vegetable oil situation is a bit uncertain at the moment partly due to the fact that the monsoon was erratic in India this year and India is the world's largest importer of vegetable oils. That could have some effect on the cost of oils available for consumers in this country. But perhaps a modest rise over the current year. Prices for sugars and sweeteners will move up pretty much in line we think with the rate of the general rate of increase in food prices. What are the basic factors that could quickly alter just what we've been talking about the food price outlook? It does change rather quickly sometimes. Food supplies of course are vulnerable to sudden changes in weather and we have had two very bad winters the past two years Larry as you know. We're sure hoping that we get to this year without unusually cold weather and also we hope we can avoid getting a cold snap either in Florida or California in the winter months because we depend on those states for the bulk of our produce during that season of the year. Weather is an important factor and can inhibit farmers ability to move their livestock to market which can tighten up supplies quickly in the short run. What tips would you give a consumer that might help them manage their food budget for this coming year? Well consumers will have to continue to look for the best buys and to take advantage of the specials that stores are offering. If you look at the ads you see wide divergences in prices among products at the various stores. It's getting more costly to shop from store to store but you still can take advantage of specials that stores are offering each week. That's what I think consumers need to look for. Dawson A. Hall, chairman of the World Food and Agricultural Outlook and Situation Board for the Department of Agriculture. Most of us are probably familiar with that slogan made famous by the L-Pages called Let Your Fingers Do the Walking. Well when that slogan came into use about 20 years ago even then the idea was energy conservation. My guess has some thoughts on how today's telephone service can help to conserve energy. Joel Bab is with the USDA's Rural Electrification Administration. Joel what are some of the ways that the telephone can cut down on using gasoline and other types of energy? Well I think we've got to take that old slogan, let your fingers do the walking and go just a little bit further than what the slogan was probably originally designed for. The slogan was probably designed to sell yellow page advertising and to help the shoppers locate the items that they wanted to buy. But I think with today that with our energy conservation that we have and I would like to say that our agency, the Rural Electrification, is certainly interested in conservation. We're primarily in the electric program but yet a lot of people don't know of our telephone program but we are vitally interested in both of these energy conservations in it. The ways that we can save it is that we're going to have to change some of our habits probably from we want to talk to mother or we want to go across town or we want to go look and see something or we want to go find out if something is there we should stop and think and stop. Do we really need to take this trip or should we pick up the telephone and do our visiting with the telephone? I think I would prefer to call around to different stores to find out they have the item than to just take the time and go look for it anyway. That's true and you know Don we might think that just this one little trip won't count but yet we have made loans to probably 4.4 million real telephone subscribers and if we could just save a mile a day how much energy would that be in a year's time? Sure even a mile a month with 4 million people would be amazing. That is quite amazing. Outside of the obvious the idea of using the telephone rather than getting in your car and driving around or verifying that indeed a store has what you're looking for what are some of the new features offered through telephone service not only in rural communities but in our urban suburban areas that are oriented toward energy conservation? Well the telephone should be well pleased because they can get the same features as the people in the urban areas and they're coming with many things. We've gone a long ways from the old crank telephone system and the two longs and three shorts with the 12 or 14 people on the line. Today we've got many many of our... Sometimes you had 12 and 14 people on the line at once too in those days. We certainly did. In fact I made a call the other day and it was to a five-hour long distance and the operator said well we got four of the other parties but we couldn't get the one you wanted to see but we don't have that today because we can. We do have many of them in the one party. I think that our features that we are going to have and as I say there that we can come that we have the same as in the urban and the rural as we have call transfer. Call transfer is this if you want to go, some housewife wants to go visit her mother she can transfer calls over there. If a business feels that they have some very important calls coming in they can transfer their calls to the house when they go to lunch and that we have call waiting. The call waiting is you receive a little buzzer or a little beep or a little tone signal and you can push one button on your telephone and transfer your call to the incoming call when you're through with that push back and get the other party that you were talking to. It also gives you an excuse to break off a long minute telephone conversation too. If you need an excuse, yes. The other thing is in addition to that is conference calling that maybe you have a couple of friends that you want to talk. You don't have to just call one person, you can call two people. We've gone into the automatic dialing with the DDD today and almost any parts of the country. I think you and I were just discussing and both of us got in our telephone bill and then we can dial direct to 74 foreign countries. These are some of the things that are coming down the pike. Joel, what about some of the features outside of telephone conversations that many telephone customers might not be familiar with? Some of the data transfers. I think the greatest move that I see in the telephone industry is the use of the computer. We're using the computer inside of the telephone in but I think the computer is going to be coming to the home and be used into the home. I think we're going to be doing a tremendous amount of purchasing with a computer. Many times today that you'll call up and you'll ask if you have a certain item at the store, it'll take a long time to get a clerk and then the clerk will have to go search. In some places you can call up on your own telephone if you have a terminal or a data set in your home, put it into the cradle, get access to the computer and the computer can tell you what's available. You're going to be able to do your purchasing with a computer. You're going to be able to do price comparison with a computer and many more things with a computer. That is rural energy conservation. When you figure the amount of gasoline it'll be wasted just in the trips to the bank and to the store. We serve many, many rural areas and I think one of the very important things in the rural areas is going to be in the medicine because we might not have all the expertise with the doctors and the fancy equipment that we have. Today we can hook up an EKG and you can be in one place and the doctor can 2,000 miles away and an expert can be sitting and making an analysis of that EKG from somebody in a little hospital way out in some far place in the country. This is something we have today using the existing telephone lines? We have that today using existing telephone lines. We do have the slow scan X-ray transfers of transferring X-rays so that the X-rays can be analyzed real quick. But I think the medicine is coming along with the computer that we are going to be able to use that computer in the telemedicine and that is going to be one of the most important or going to become very, very important especially in the rural areas. One final question that really isn't directly related to this but is important. Many urban suburban telephone lines are now buried underground. What advice do you have or precautions for the homeowner that they should be aware of? It's very unfortunate that where they used to probably where the telephone company wants to bury their line is probably where that homeowner wants to put his mailbox. And you start digging down to put that mailbox and you can cut that cable and with it buried the cable and there's usually signs up there and when you do cut that cable you're cutting your own cable plus you're cutting your cable from all the people around you. I've seen them put in fence rows and fence rows it just so happens that you want to put the fence row right down where the cable is. In fact it gets very expensive not from a standpoint of maybe just coming out and fixing it but some of these cables carry a tremendous amount of volume of business. I had one friend that was out demonstrating a backhoe and he cut the cable and just for the loss of business until they could switch that it cost him about $42,000. Don't cut the cable. Thanks very much Joel Babb with the Rural Electrification Administration being with us taking a look at the telephone as an energy conservation tool. Today on Better Way for Kids we begin a new three-part series on soil and why it's important to us. I'm Tom Leverman with the Soil Conservation Service. You've all heard the word soil you probably see soil every day but how much do you really know about soil about its development how humans use it and abuse it. This little bit of soil takes away a piece of history. The result of natural processes that began thousands of years ago and continue even today. Soil isn't all the same. Here are two examples of soil both from Maryland. It's quite easy to see the difference between these two soils. The cellum has a very shallow topsoil indicated by the dark soil colored soil which is about three and a half inches deep. The color from the topsoil down is the same. At about 29 inches rocks are found. The Hagerstown cellum has a dark brown layer about nine and a half to ten inches deep. There are a few small pebbles found in this layer. Notice the distinct color change between the first layer the topsoil and the subsoil. The color is about the same all the way down to the bottom where we find some large rocks. This is about 36 inches deep. These are only two examples of nearly 70,000 soils found in the United States. That's right, 70,000 different soils. Now here's a quick two-question quiz to test your knowledge of soil. Question number one. Soil is made from rocks, plants, animals, glaciers or all of the above. The process to manufacture soil is extremely complicated. Every activity of nature including glaciers which slowly moved across the land to the death and decay of plant and animal life all have a part in creating the material we call soil. Question two. Which of the following is found in soil? Sand, silt, clay, air or all of the above? A close investigation of soil reveals a great diversity of materials. The primary building blocks of soil are sand, silt and finally clay. The thin layer of soil that covers the earth's surface ranges from just a few inches to four or five feet in depth. The soil is where all human and natural forces eventually meet. On the soil we grow crops, build highways, homes and businesses. The soil is the foundation of our lives. We're in an electron microscope lab. You can see grains of sand magnified one hundred times. Now I'll zoom the lens in closer and you can see the grains of sand magnified one thousand times their original size. And once again I'll zoom the lens in closer and you'll see the grains of sand magnified ten thousand times their original size. Soil scientists, people who study soil, say that about fifty percent of the space is composed of air and moisture. Now here's another way to take a look at our example of sand. This x-ray machine shows you what the sand is made of. This peak shows the amount of silicon contained in our sample of sand. But by the way, how did you do on your soil quiz? The answers to both questions are all of the above. I hope you visit me again to learn more exciting things about soil. The holiday season may have left you with a lot of leftover nuts. The eating kind. Nuts contribute rich flavor and a crunchy texture to many kinds of foods. They're not only tasty, but nutritious as well. Nuts in the shell keep well in a nut bullet room temperature for a short period of time. For prolonged storage keep them in a cool, dry place. Shelled nuts will keep fresh for several months if you store them in a tightly closed container in the refrigerator. Nuts are filling because of their fat content and may prevent between meal hunger pangs which encourage nibbling. Most common nuts contain about 10 to 25% protein and can be an added source of protein in meals. Peanuts are highest in protein with 25%. Nuts are versatile and may come to the dinner table in a variety of ways as an ingredient in cooking or as a garnish. If you'd like to find more ways of using nuts in main dishes, soups, salads and desserts send for this copy of nuts and family meals. Write to Agriculture TV, Washington DC 202-50 Japan is one of the major customers for U.S. food products. Recently our reporter Wally Dudney visited a United States food fair in Japan. Here's his report. Eating habits are changing in Japan. More Japanese are eating out and western style foods are becoming more popular. This includes many consumer ready foods from the United States. Sales of these foods to Japan totaled nearly $1.5 billion last year. To see and sample these products Japanese food importers gathered in Tokyo for an American foods exhibition part of the big international hotel and restaurant show. Phil Holloway assistant U.S. agricultural attaché in Japan describes what they saw. In this exhibit we have at least 50 exhibitors which come from almost all states in the union. Among them are many fruit and vegetable some of our cooperator organizations such as the American Soybean Association, the Poultry and Egg Institute of America, the U.S. Meat Export Federation, California Cling Peach Advisory Board among other organizations here. Buyers attending the show represented all segments of the Japanese food trade. Many of them represent hotel and restaurant trade but also we have people here from the Japanese school lunch program from mass feeding units of major Japanese corporations and other institutional feeders and we are quite pleased with the quality of the visitor that we are receiving from them. Japanese food buyers were able to taste a wide range of American foods. Many of them knew to the Japanese market. Sales of these consumer ready foods accounted for about 15 percent of the 4.4 billion dollars of American agricultural products sold to Japan last year. Japan is the number one overseas market for U.S. farm products but there is strong competition for U.S. food producers who are actively promoting their products. Phil Holloway comments on the future of American sales. With the tremendous demand for U.S. consumer ready food products in Japan, I expect sales to double in the next two years. Wally Duttony reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from Tokyo. There's a very good chance that you're watching this program on a Japanese made television set and you probably listen to a Japanese camera or you might be one of millions of Americans who drive a Japanese automobile. The thing to pay for these imported goods are American agricultural products. You know, in less than 200 years our nation has developed the most efficient and abundant food production system in the world. We progress from hand power to horse and ox to complete mechanization. The quality and quantity of our yield increases each year. We feed not only ourselves but also a substantial part of the planet. Where do we go from here? What's the future of American agriculture? What are the concerns? Larry Quinn has this report. The economic and social structure of agriculture directly affects all Americans. The income farmers make, the jobs of people in the marketing chain, the quality of life in rural communities, the price of food, even the value of the dollar in foreign trade are affected by our food and agriculture system and how it operates. That means that the consequences of a given farm structure pose critically important issues of public policy. The term structure is an economist word used to describe such things as the number, size, and control of farms. The relationship between farmers and their suppliers and markets and other institutions that make up our food and agriculture system or influence how it operates. Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland has called for a dialogue between American agriculture to re-examine the forces which has shaped agriculture as we know it today. A broad-based public discussion of these issues will occur in a series of 10 meetings in late November and December. Agriculture Secretary Bergland outlined areas of concern that will be discussed. Well, looking at trends in land ownership, for example, everyone is concerned about we're going to look carefully at how that farm is situated and what's happening. We know that in the last 10 years there are about a million families have retired from farming and during that period only half a million new starts. Will that be a good or a bad thing if it continues? We're going to look at then commodity policy, credit policy, and all the rest including tax policy to see whether these policies make sense in the long run. Are there any social and economic issues involved here? There are. The social issues are, for example, trying to measure the worth of having a policy in which people are given a chance to own the land they live on. And we know that 100 years ago with the Homestead Act that was the roots of the policy at that time. If you lived on the land, you had a chance to own it. And since then, of course, the way from that basic concept about half the land in the United States is now tenant farmed. Nothing really wrong with that. But if the rate tendency towards increased tendency continues what then will we have land owned by a relative handful and is this a good thing or a bad thing? Of course the farmers and the rural citizens have the most at stake in a dialogue on this subject but we all have something about one family and four in the United States lives in a rural place. Now, only about one fourth of those live on farms but we are a rural country. And so the question of the future of small farming in the country is an important issue. One and a half million farms in this country are too small to provide full-time employment for the family but they have non-farm jobs and there have been some people who criticize the rural development programs in the grounds that they're either not effective or we don't need it or for whatever reason and we want to examine the social and economic implications in the role of these small-scale farms in the country. Today we seem to think in terms of large-scale farming, mechanization, automation, efficiency and hard-charging output all of which has served the United States very well and we don't mean to find fault with any of this. We're simply looking to see whether these programs are doing what it is that we want to do and if the small-scale farming has a role to play in this country maybe we should design programs to accommodate that need as well. Next week, Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergman will be back with us to discuss the problem of using marginal land. We're going to focus on the importance of soil conservation and how it affects all of us. Debbie Reader, I didn't realize there are so many different kinds of peanuts. Oh, there are many, many kinds. That's it for a better way. We'll be back in seven days. Join us.