400 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



factors of soil conditions and annual precipitation which govern in 

 many instances. 



There are the factors of the unavailability or inadequacy of present 

 marketing facilities for crops that have never been raised in some 

 areas. 



A farmer, of course, in order to shift into a new crop, even though 

 all other factors are permissive, would have to have those facilities 

 available which would make in some areas and perhaps in some com- 

 modities those shifts a little more slow. 



I might say that that is the reason that after a great deal of con- 

 sideration we have left the provision in specifically that acreage allot- 

 ments or marketing quotas or other similar devices should be left in 

 present legislatation with whatever strengthening or improvement 

 the Congress might see fit to provide or might feel was needed to deal 

 with those situations. 



I know of one area in relation to wheat that is a single-crop area 

 where the hard-pan texture of the subsoil, the limited precipitation, 

 where farmers have gone bankrupt for many years until they learned 

 that that area would only produce wheat. 



That is on the west side of the triangle country in Montana where 

 they cannot raise barley, flax, or anything other than letting that go 

 to range land for livestock or wheat. 



It is a great wheat country. They summer fallow half of their 

 land and keep it black to conserve 2 years' moisture. That is about 

 adequate to raise one very good crop of wheat. They keep the weeds 

 out that way. 



In an area like this, if we utilize horizontal acreage allotments in 

 an attempt to force them into production of another crop, all you do 

 is to get down 1 day to the irreducible minimum in the size of a sound 

 unit, and you put the man out of business because he cannot shift to 

 something else. 



There are many, a great many, areas in agriculture where there is, 

 in our judgment, sufficient know-how among farmers, where there 

 has been sufficient experience in diversified types of production, where 

 the utilization of currently used mechanized equipment is made among 

 wide varieties of crops, where rain fall, soil texture and all of the fac- 

 tors would make possible the major beginnings for a basis of adjust- 

 ment of crops, with the other things available to us in those instances 

 where those factors were not so favorable. 



Mr. Albert. On another point, your graduated scale of supports, 

 5,000, 7,500, and so forth, do you think that might tend to overpro- 

 duction unless we carried acreage controls or some other control pro- 

 gram along with it? I can conceive of situations where a certain type 

 of operator might be able to make money with supports at 80 or 65 

 percent. 



Mr. Talbott. I think that is probably true. It seemed to us that 

 the graduation downward was in many ways more desirable for some 

 of the reasons I outlined this morning than supports at whatever level, 

 and naturally for family-type farmers we recommend full supports 

 on the parity concept, or than to cut it right oflf at that point because 

 of the volume of the total production which would be left out of any 

 consideration and the difficulties as we view them, and the case of 

 necessity for the use of acreage allotments. 



