376 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Congress, of its own volition, made adeqnate funds available for sup- 

 port of anything- other than the six basics. 



In that connotation, I should like to ask the members of the com- 

 mittee for just a few moments to leave this wonderful committee room 

 and go out to my farm in Dickey County, N. Dak. We are back now 

 to six basic commodities. We have too much wheat, we think. We 

 need to adjust that wheat. We are supposed to do it without any 

 regimentation. Parenthetically, let me say that I have heard more 

 so-called farm leaders worry about regimentation than I have ever 

 heard farmers worry about it. 



I just do not run into that up in our countrj'^ at all. I do not mean to 

 limit that to North Dakota, because I travel, as you perhaps know^ 

 rather widely over the Midwest and I have heard very few farmers 

 worry about the regimentation. They worry about whether they are 

 going to have income enough to stay in business. My farm is in 

 Dickey County, N. Dak., which is a mixed farming area. North 

 Dakota has usually and historically been considered a wheat State 

 and I might state for the information of the committee that since 

 1935 a very substantial majority of the gross income in agriculture has 

 been derived from livestock and allied products of livestock and not 

 from wheat and cereal grains. On my farm we are back to six basic 

 commodities and no particular consideration that I can be sure of on 

 anytliing else. I cannot raise cotton or rice or tobacco on my farm 

 in North Dakota. I can eat peanuts, but I cannot raise peanuts on my 

 farm in North Dakota. 



I am a little too far West to be in the so-called commercial corn 

 area. I can raise a lower quality of corn which I can utilize rather 

 efficiently for feeding of hogs or cattle. But in terms of my farming 

 operations, the one commodity that I can have any assurance of any 

 kind of support price on is wheat. 



I consider myself, as most farmers are, a reasonably good citizen 

 and I want to be loyal and patriotic and I want to gear my opera- 

 tions, to the extent I can, to the needs of the country. But after all, 

 I have to stay in business as a farmer. My income has to somewhere 

 near meet the outgo in the operation of that farm if I am to stay in 

 business. My county AAA committee comes out to me and they tell 

 me all of this story about how we have so much wheat and we need to 

 reduce wlieat and we need to expand certain other commodities which 

 are in short supply. After they get all through with me and we 

 analyze the thing, I am up against the problem of leaving the one com- 

 modity that I can produce, which has any kind of support in a farm 

 program, and transferring the acres on my farm to commodities that 

 do not have any consideration. 



I want to be loyal and I want to be a good guy and I want to do 

 •what the country needs to have done, but if I operate on that basis I 

 will go out of business very fast, as I am sure you can readily under- 

 stand. 



Therefore, you are not going to get me, as an individual farmer, to 

 quit the production of the one crop that I can raise which might have 

 supports in order to shift over to other crops which do not have any 

 kind of price support or program at all. 



Now, on the assumption that we set forth in our draft of a bill that 

 all commodities are given equal treatment, I can raise a great many 



