GENERAL FARM PEOGSAM 



TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1949 



House of Represextatives, 



Committee on Agriculture, 



Washington, D. C. 



The Chairman (Mr. Cooley). The committee will please be in 

 order. We have Secretary Braiman with us again, this morning. 



Mr. Secretary, I would like to clear up one or two things, if I may. 

 One is \\\i\\ reference to the limitation of 1,800 units. I would like to 

 ask whether or not it is your recommendation that the 1,800-Lmit rule 

 apply to crops under marketing quotas. 



In that connection, I would like to point out the possibility that in 

 1950 at least three crops gro\\ai in my area will be under marketing 

 quotas. They are tobacco, peanuts, and cotton. In that event, as 

 you know, the producers of those commodities will have their refer- 

 endum and then marketing quotas are imposed and the Secretary of 

 Agriculture fixes the goals. 



In the event the producers of any particular commodity are under 

 control, all the surplus over and above their acreage allotments and 

 marketing quotas is subjected to a penalty of 50 percent of the value. 



Would it be your purpose to apph^ the 1,800-unit rule or any other 

 rule to those major basic commodities that are being produced and sold 

 under acreage allotments and marketiiig quotas, or would they be free 

 to operate under the program which we now have in existence and 

 imder which we are operating this year? 



FURTHER STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES F. BRANNAN, 

 SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Chairman, my I preface my answer to 

 that, which is that we do not, by this statement: Wlienever you 

 attempt to prepare a statement for the committees of Congress you 

 are always competing between two principles. First of all, you want 

 to be as clear and lucid as you can, even though they are recommenda- 

 tions, and on the other hand you do not want to write a book. We 

 had some material in our statement on this subject, but eliminated it 

 in the interest of cutting the statement do^^^l. We are in the process 

 of re^^Titing that material in fuller elaboration and if the committee 

 wishes to have it we will have it available here in the next day or two. 



The simple answer, it seems to me, to the question you have just 

 put is that if there are marketing quotas and acreage limitations in 

 effect on a specific commodity, they were put into effect as the result 

 of a determination that a certain amount of production, namely, that 

 amount of production within those marketing quotas and acreage 

 limitations, was in balance or consistent with the national demand, the 



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