GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 311 



This program of yours might help to do that? 



Secretary Brannan. It would help, sir. 



Mr. O'SuLLiVAN. This being a farm program, and being for the 

 direct benefit of the farmers, would not necessarily take in packing 

 interests or livestock feeders who are not farmers, would it? 



Secretary Brannan. It would not take in packers. If feeders are 

 the last to handle the animal before it goes to slaughter, they might 

 be the direct recipients of the support operation. They would benefit 

 under the present support operation, as a matter of fact. 



Mr. O 'Sullivan. Would not the program, then, not be a program 

 for the benefit of the farmer, but one for the direct benefit of people in 

 business who are not farmers? 



To illustrate my point, I know many cattle feeders who do not own 

 farms and never were farmers. They go down to Texas and other 

 places and buy large numbers of livestock and put them in feed lots. 

 The majority of the big feeders are not farmers. These feeders are in 

 an independent business. This program should not help them, 

 should it? 



Secretary Brannan. They are handling, finishing and preparing a 

 food commodity for the market. 



Mr. O'SuLLivAN. So is the fellow who mills the wheat and the people 

 who make corn flakes, and so forth. 



Secretary Brannan. I suppose, Mr. O'Sullivan, the essence of your 

 question, which would apply to the present program as well as any 

 program I recommended, is whether we should make the support price 

 applicable at the point where the livestock moves from the original 

 producer into the hands of the feeder. 



If you settle that question for the present you will settle it for any 

 other program as well. 



Mr. O'Sullivan. Is that confusion all brought about because we 

 do not go back to the basic thing, that this is a farm program and it is 

 for the benefit of farmers, and not for the benefit of meat packers or 

 feeders who are not farmers, or for anyone else who finishes a farm 

 product? 



Secretary Brannan. That is right. The law so states today, as a 

 matter of fact. 



Mr. O'Sullivan. I think it is true all over the country, that most of 

 these feeders are not farmers. They are in a business. 



They finish thousands of head of cattle. Swift has a feed yard in 

 or near Omaha, where I suppose they have 4,000 or 5,000 head of 

 livestock being fed at all times of the year. 



Another feeder may have five or six thousand, and another four 

 or five thousand, and still others smaller numbers on feed. 



None of these men are necessarily farmers. Even a doctor I know 

 is feeding cattle and he is not a farmer. This whole thing could be 

 clarified if we kept this in mind, that this is a farm program, could it 

 not? 



Secretary Brannan. Yes. It would be stabilized and helped. 



Mr. O'Sullivan. The question has been asked here by one of the 

 distinguished gentlemen, "Why do we need a national farm program?" 

 Is not the answer to that that we want to and must protect the 

 farmer against the man who in the past has "farmed the farmer"? 



Secretary Brannan. That is part of the answer, certainly. 



