GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 411 



ing quotas to get me to cut m^' 160 acres of wheat down to 100 acres 

 or 60 acres or cut that out entirely in a year or so. 



Mr. PoAGE. Let's see if we do not. We are going to assure you of 

 getting $2.19 a bushel for wheat. The only w;ay we are going to be 

 able to do it is to see that you do not produce so much wheat and that 

 your neighbor does not produce so much and they do not produce 

 so much in Kansas or Texas or Montana. 



We are going to cut down the total production of wheat in the 

 United States so that you can not grow more than one hundred acres 

 of wheat. 



On that hundred acres of wheat you will get the full parity price 

 of $2.19. 



I readily see how that can be done and I recognize that it is per- 

 fectly feasible and practicable. You have to grow something besides 

 wheat because you have twenty acres there that is out of wheat. 



We will assume you grow some chickens. You say you would just 

 as soon change into chickens as to grow wheat because you are going 

 to get the same comparable price on them, which woulcl mean that if 

 you sold them as eggs you would get 531/3 cents for those eggs, which 

 is a good deal higher than you have been getting. 



As I understand it, you contemplate in this program that if you 

 had to sell these eggs for the 30 cents that they have sold for in your 

 county the Government would simply pay you or any other producer 

 the additional 21: cents. 



Mr. Talbott. That is right, but the basic point you may have 

 missed in this discussion because I did a bad job in analysis this morn- 

 ing. Congressman Poage, is this: Whether it is $2.19 for wheat or 

 whatever the parity index will be, it will be a comparable price for 

 eggs, a comparable parity price, calculated into the units. I do not 

 have to go from wheat to eggs. 



Mr. PoAGE. I understand that, but I am getting at another point. 



Mr. Talbott. The whole purpose, Mr. Congressman, as I outlined 

 in the provisions for administration of this program, is that I can 

 and do file voluntarily with my county committee, at least we do in 

 that county, as a matter of information, whether it is required or not, 

 our intention to produce far in advance of the cropping or breeding 

 season. 



If all of the voluntary plans of farmers all over the United States 

 are funneled in here and measured against the total needs of the coun- 

 try as determined by the Department of Agriculture, those can be 

 broken down into goals and brought right back to each individual 

 farm, not on a must basis unjess that should in the end be required 

 in certain commodities, but brought back to me, as I outlined this 

 morning, where the county committee is in a position to tell me, "We 

 need more hogs, more feed for hogs, more barley, more oats," or rye 

 or whatever it is of all of the ranges of things I can produce. 



We have too many eggs, too much wheat, too much of some other 

 things. 



He can ask me if I will make the adjustments. I would quite readily 

 make the adjustments. 



Mr. Pace. That is assuming that your returns on the eggs and other 

 commodities would be comparable. 



Mr. Talbott. That is exactly right. That is what the conversion 

 of these comparable unit systems does. 



