GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 67 



Mr. CooLEY. But you never have attempted to use it? 



Secretary Brannan. That is right. 



Mr. CooLEY. "VVlien you have regulated the production of one crop 

 you have not attempted to regulate the entire farming operations? 



Secretary Brannan. That is right, except with respect to the 

 application at some times, I think, of the payments for non-soil- 

 depleting crops. I think there has been some old history of withhold- 

 ing payments for adjustments or shifts. 



Mr. CooLEY. We have had tobacco under control more frequently 

 than any other crop, and there never have been any requirements 

 attached to the program other than that the farmer stay within his 

 given acreage allotment. You never have sought by inducement or 

 otherwise to force him to control his other acreage, but you do have the 

 soil program payments which he receives if he complies with the 

 program. 



I never was conscious of the fact that that power now existed in 

 the present law\ I do not think Congress ever intended it to be in the 

 law. I do not know how you have interpreted it to put it in the law 

 since 1938. 



Secretary Brannan. The only reason we did was because you 

 people asked us whether it was there or not. We did not interpret 

 it with a view to using it tomorrow. 



Mr. CooLEY. That is all, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Hope. Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Pace. Mr. Hope. 



Mr. Hope. Right at that point, I am no more anxious than anyone 

 else to see a lot of regimentation connected with these programs, but 

 suppose you have a corn program and have acreage allotments with 

 or without marketing quotas, and under the acreage allotments you 

 decrease the acreage of corn 20 percent nationally and in the States. 

 Of course that would not be worked out uniformly at 20 percent, 

 but you would be reducing the corn acreage on the individual farms. 



Unless you have some control of that acreage that goes out of 

 corn there will be nothing to keep the farmer from planting grain 

 sorghums or barley or oats, which would simply complicate your 

 problems. He would not produce as much feed, in all probability, as 

 if he had that acreage in corn, but he would produce a very substantial 

 quantity which to that extent would render your corn control program 

 ineffective. 



My question is if we take out of the law the authority which you 

 now have to regulate the use of the acreage that goes out of a crop 

 which is under acreage allotments or marketing quotas, do you think 

 the law could operate effectively? 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Hope, I think we are coming to a period 

 of time when the possibilities will be just as you have indicated, 

 that a farmer may go out of one soil-depleting crop and into another 

 soil-depleting crop, such as soybeans. 



During the war we encouraged him to go into soybeans because 

 this country and the world had fats and oils deficiencies. One of the 

 national objectives of a farm program is the conservation, good use, 

 and preservation of our soil resources. We would not be following 

 that principle or paying due respect to that principle if there was not 

 some device for encouraging the farmer when he goes out of one 

 soil-depleting crop not to go into an almost exactly substitute soil- 

 depleting crop. 



