272 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Secretary Brannan. All right. If you will predicate the produc- 

 tion payments, then actually acreage allotments or marketing agree- 

 ments, either one, could be possibh^ made an effective instrument. 



Mr. Pace. You, in your statement, have asked that you be author- 

 ized to require the producers to comply with the programs of acreage 

 allotments, marketing quotas, and marketing agreements. 



Secretary Brannan. Yes. 



Mr. Pace. The thing that disturbed me was your request to control 

 through acreage allotments. I can see where it can be effective if you 

 are going to use the payment plan as a supplement. 



Secretary Brannan. That is right. 



Mr. Pace. But inasmuch as you indicate you want to use the pay- 

 ment plan as sparingly as possible 



Secretary Brannan. I want to use it on all of the perishables. 



Mr. Pace. On all? 



Secretary Brannan. Practically all of them. As a matter of fact, 

 in the case of some of them, I do not know of any other program that 

 you can use. 



Mr. Pace. I am afraid you may be right there. As I have indicated 

 to you previously, I want it to be used in trying to do it on those com- 

 modities where nothing else could be eft'ective, to see how it works. 



Secretary Brannan. I think we may have to ask you for an oppor- 

 tunity to do that. 



Mr. Pace. One other question, and then I am through. 



You also ask for the authority to require producers to comply with 

 the programs by curtailing wasteful production and also curtailing dis- 

 orderly marketing. Wliat do you mean by wasteful production? 



Secretary Brannan. Well, I think perhaps we had in mind the 

 potatoes again. I do not like to be talking about them, because that 

 gives the impression we are maligning the potato growers of the coun- 

 try, and we are not. If I had been a potato grower, I think I would 

 have acted as almost any one of them did. But I think it is apparent 

 to every student of the marketing of potatoes that we have now reached 

 a limitation or that there is a limitation l)eyond which the American 

 people just won't eat potatoes almost if you give them to them. 

 AYliere the demand is that inelastic 



Mr. Pace. That is what you had in mind particularly? . 



Secretary Brannan. Yes. Where the production gets beyond that 

 inelastic boundary, then I think the production should be character- 

 ized as wasteful, and I think appropriate methods to stop production 

 beyond that limit ought to be taken. 



Mr. Pace. W^iat do you mean by curtailing disorderly marketing? 



Secretary Brannan. An example of curtailing disorderly mar- 

 keting 



The Chairman. How about the marketing of inferior goods? 



Secretary Brannan. Well, that would be one of the problems of dis- 

 orderly marketing. 



Mr. Pace. What I was trying to get to is that in my opinion one of 

 your greatest problems at this hour must be hogs, because you have 

 announced a support price of hogs, and Congress has not given you 

 much machinery to make good on it. I understand one of the things 

 that breaks the price of hogs is the disorderly marketing of hogs; 

 that is to say that many of them ar(^ marketed during a short period, 

 and the most of them are marketed just in 1 or 2 days each week. Is 

 that right? 



