GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 605 



Mr. Da\t:s. I do not know. 



Mr. Albert. Of course, it is possible tliey would do so if you made 

 that a condition to it. 



Mr. Davis. Yes; I think they would set up conservation districts 

 because they would find it to their advantage. 



Mr. PoAGE. If we embark upon a broad program such as you sug- 

 gest here, and frankly I am in full agreement as I see it at the moment 

 with that part of your viewpoint that we ought to support all prices 

 rather than just select a few, and frankly I heard with some dis- 

 appointment what I understood to be the change in emphasis on the 

 part of the Secretary expressing a different viewpoint. It seems 

 to me that the man who grows a minor crop, let us say, the tung nut 

 peoi:)le, or the mohair people that were in here yesterday, are entitled 

 to consideration just as well as those who grow cotton and corn. 

 It would not take as much money to take care of them, but propor- 

 tionately they are as much entitled as those who grow the major 

 crops, in the same proportion that their crops bear in relation to 

 the cost as a whole. In other words, if we spend $2,000,000,000 on 

 cotton, if we purchase $2,000,000,000 worth of cotton and purchase 

 only $200,000,000 worth of mohair, the one is costing 10 times as 

 much, but we should be interested in the small grower. 



I agree with you that we should give consideration to the small 

 crops. Xow when we have done that, however, when we have set 

 up a jDrogram, whether it be the Secretary's program, the present 

 program, or any other program to take care of these crops, it is 

 obvious that we are going to have, as I see it at least in some situa- 

 tions, one that will create some acreages that we will have to deal 

 with. They maj^ be called retarded acres, or deferred acres, but we are 

 going to have a situation where we will have acreage that has been 

 in cultivation that is not going to be under the plough for the given 

 year. 



Mr. Da\ts. Yes. 



Mr. PoAGE. And are we not going to have to meet that situation 

 under any program presented to us ? 



Mr. Davis. Well, I think that in this process of shifting that we 

 would have some land that would be shifted to lower use, and there- 

 fore we will have fewer acres, and I think the Government has some 

 responsibility in that area of farm policy. It seems to me that some 

 responsible agency functioning in the field of the Farm and Home 

 Administration might try to adjust the size of the units, and it may 

 be that some of the land that is under the plough needs to go into 

 pasture or range land. 



I do not know whether I covered the point you had in mind. 



Mr. PoAGE. I agree with you there. But remember that we have 

 taken 20.000,000 acres of land out of cotton production, but when 

 that is done, when we put a support under all of them, all of the 

 crops, you are going to have a more or less control program over all 

 of them, and then you begin to get around to shifting land from 

 cotton into something else and you have not accomplished anythmg. 



Mr. White. Xo. 



]Mr. PoAGE. You have not accomplished anything when you shift 

 from peanuts to cotton: it accomplishes nothing. So we are going 

 to have a situation resulting in a substantial amount of acreage that 

 is not needed, unless there is some special crop that the Government 



