388 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



With population growing, surely, it seems to me that the cost of 

 accumulating those reserves and the cost of carrying them would be a 

 small price, indeed, for 140 or 150 or 160 or 170 million people in this 

 country to pay for having adequate insurance that we would not be 

 desperately short of those basically needed commodities. 



I would like to use one other point as an illustration, if I might, 

 Mr. Chairman. I had an opportunity to listen to a few of the ques- 

 tions offered by the committee and the answers given by the Secretary 

 in the last day or so and I noted that there was some concern on the 

 part of some members of the committee as to the possible cost of the 

 so-called suggested production payments which we here call compen- 

 satory payments on hogs. It is interesting to note that there is a quite 

 definite relationship between the market prices of edible and inedible 

 fats and oils. That enters into the field not only of livestock, but of 

 cotton and peanuts and the oil crops as well as the edible fats and the 

 inedible fats from livestock. 



During the war, you will remember we had all the housewives 

 saving the drippings from the bacon grease because the country need- 

 ed those fats and oils. The shortage was so great that inedible fats 

 and oils sold as high as 27 cents a pound as recently as a year and a 

 half ago. Today inedible fats and oils are selling at 3.5 cents a pound 

 on the open market. 



I doubt if you have noted any corresponding decrease in the price 

 of soap and allied products at the consumer level. 



The thing I want to point out is that when inedible fats and oils 

 take a nose dive because of an alleged surplus at the moment or 

 some stocks in somebody's hands, when inedible fats and oils take a nose 

 dive from 27 cents a pound to 3.5 cents a pound, that edible fats which 

 are a part of the hog; industry, and edible fats which are a part of 

 the peanut industry and the soybean industry and the cotton industry, 

 while they have not gone down as low as 3.5 cents, have had very 

 sharp reductions. 



I submit to the committee that when edible fats and oils took a very 

 sharp reduction following inedible fats and oils, then probably that 

 constituted a considerable weight on the current prices of livestock and 

 the possible cost to the Government in supporting hogs or any other 

 crop wdiich has as a direct product or a byproduct either edible or in- 

 edible fats and oils would be greater than it would be if we were pre- 

 pared to stock pile, let us say, an adequate reserve of both inedible and 

 edible fats and oils and hold their weight off the market place. It 

 might be pennies spent in one way to save dollars in another way on 

 the part of the Federal Government. 



Section 202 of title II of the bill : 



The committee will note that the language is identical, with the 

 exception of an addition of the last sentence to what I understand to 

 be language already in the process of moving through Congress in re- 

 gard to amending the Commodity Credit Corporation charter. 



I am sure the members of this committee are thoroughly conversant 

 with the impact upon farmers of the fact that the Commodity Credit 

 Corporation a year ago was prohibited from owning or providing 

 storage facilities, particularly in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, where 

 adequate storage facilities were not available either in private hands or 

 any other hands, and because of the needed regidations of the Com- 

 modity Credit Corporation that a commodity had to be put in an ap- 



