GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 193 



The Chairman. Mr. Hope desires to ask you a question on that 

 point, Mr. Secretary. 



Mr. Hope. What you have just said, Mr. Secretary, leaves me 

 somewhat confused, because I had the idea that the purpose of putting 

 these hmitations on was to discourage farming in large units. 



If I understand you correctly, in the case of Mr. Tom Campbell if 

 marketing quotas are put on wheat he w^oukl be entitled to receive a 

 support price on all he might produce on his thousands and thousands 

 of acres of wheat. 



Secretary Brannan. He might, or he might not, depending on how 

 he established his quota. That is a subject wliich relates to the estab- 

 Hshment of quotas. I do not know what kind of a base Mr. Campbell 

 or any other wheat farmer has for establishing his quotas. 



If it goes back to some of the early law which you people have been 

 discussing up here, he may or may not be in the wheat business at all. 

 I think you have to take a look at the specific application of your 

 marketing-quota law before we draw the conclusion that any one 

 individual is in or is out. 



Mr. Hope. I just mentioned Mr. Campbell as an example. There 

 are a good many wheat farmers out in the Great Plains area wdio pro- 

 duce in some years in excess of 1,800 units. My supposition was that 

 the pm-pose of putting this limitation on was to cUscourage large-scale 

 farming and encourage the smaller farmer. 



Mr. Albert. Mr. Hope, will you yield for just one question? 



Secretary Brannan. Might I be permitted to answer that first, 

 Mr. Albert? 



If you set the marketing quota basis, the determination for the 

 marketing quota basis, Mr. Hope, the conclusion you have just 

 reached might be true. I do say that if we put the marketing quota 

 basis on some of the previous bases that we have for some of these 

 commodities, it very well might not be true. I am thinking about the 

 area in the eastern part of Colorado where within just the last 2 or 3 

 years entire sections have been plowed up. The country roads are 

 obliterated and the fences are brought right along the main highway 

 and a 40-foot gang plow has gone through and broken all the land. 



Under my concept of what Congress may well do in directing us to 

 certain marketing quotas or acreage limitations, those people would 

 not get marketing quotas and acreage allotments. Those are the 

 kind of people, actually, that I can say very frankly here I think we 

 ought to discourage from getting into business. They have destroyed 

 the farms. They have covered over what was once the farmstead 

 building site. The well has gone under the plow and all the rest of 

 the evidences of a rural community in that part of the country have 

 disappeared before this immense industrial type of operation. 



What is even worse about that is that the very day that a drought 

 hits that part of the country these people will just pull out what equip- 

 ment they have there. Most of the w^ork is done by custom anyhow. 

 The}^ would just leave the land for somebody else to take care of and 

 protect against blowing and all the other effects of drought. 



I do think we have made great progress. I do not think by any 

 means that under the proposal we have made here, Mr. Hope, we will 

 in one fell swoop reverse the trend toward bigger farms. 1 think the 

 precise question before the committee is how we may qualify, within 

 reasonable limitations, the use of any price-support mechanism to 



