296 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



or not. How are you going to support hogs when you have to support 

 them? 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Granger, I can see only one method and 

 I certainly do not recommend it and approach it with fear and 

 trembling. That is buying pork from the packer and looking for 

 some place to put it. That is the only authority we have under 

 existing law. 



Mr. Granger. You would propose to buy enough pork to keep the 

 price at the support level? 



Secretary Brannan. That is the theory and the mechanism. 



Mr. Granger. Under your program how would you support the 

 price of cattle, hogs, and other livestock? 



Secretary Brannan. We would allow the price of hogs to seek its 

 level in the market place and pay the farmer directly the difference 

 between that average level and the support standard, whatever it 

 may be. 



Mr. Granger. I was talkmg to some of your people in the Depart- 

 ment about the possibility of working out an insurance. It seemed to 

 me that it could work very easily with livestock. Have you given 

 any thought to the possibility of doing that? 



Secretary Brannan. Of a price-insurance program? 



Mr. Granger. Yes. 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Granger, we did do a lot of work on a price 

 insurance program. We tried its application on many kinds of com- 

 modities. We ran into difficulties, we thought, in almost all of them. 

 The real problem comes in any kind of insurance operation when the 

 commodity over a period of time rests at the support level because if it 

 does and the Government is insuring that price at that level they will 

 again be delivering the producer a check and it will be reckoned from 

 the same kind of premise we are talking about in production payments. 

 As a matter of fact, it seems to me that production payments are in 

 one sense of the word an insurance program. The only difference is 

 that the farmer does not pay a premium in advance. The premium 

 he pays in advance if the price stays at the support level for any 

 appreciable period of time would be tantamount to a 5 percent or some 

 other percent reduction in the support level. 



Mr. Granger. Have you had any response from livestock pro- 

 ducers as to whether or not they wanted any program? Someone 

 told me yesterday that nobody wanted the support price on livestock. 

 Have you heard anything about that? 



Secretary Brannan. No, we certainly have not. There are always 

 a few people who take the position that if the Government was entirely 

 out of the agricultural support business farmers, producers, and 

 customers would be better off. I think that question is settled. I 

 think the Congress settles it every time it makes an appropriation for 

 carrying on the programs. It settled it when it passed the several 

 programs. 



Mr. Granger. Then you have not discovered any way to sugar- 

 coat the production payment other than the way you suggest, by direct 

 payment. As a matter of fact, that was about the most effective 

 method of payment and the most satisfactory method we had during 

 the war where we paid a direct subsidy for milk, was it not? 



Secretary Brannan. Yes, and I am sure that you want to go on to 

 say that that was a purely consumer subsidy and is not comparable 

 to what we are doing here. 



