Excerpts from: Speech prepared for delivery by Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman to the annual meeting of the Rice Millers Association at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas, Friday, January 31, 1964: Are agricultural exports important? They are exceedingly important -- more than at any time in our history to farmers and to the entire nation. Exports provide markets for over 60 million producing acres; they greatly ease the problems of production adjustment. Exports strengthen market prices and improve farm incomes. Farm products for export provide jobs for around one million farm workers, and many thousands of additional jobs for those in towns and cities who transport, store, process, and otherwise service our food and agricultural industries. Agricultural exports selling in the world market for dollars add to the plus-side of our international accounts at the rate of $4 billion a year -- twice the dollar export rate of 1955, before most of today's market expansion efforts were undertaken.
