626 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



Our organization has conferred with other organizations of wheat producers in 

 the Pacific Northwest and with the Granges, Farm Bureaus, and Farmers Unions 

 in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. We have been meeting with these 

 other organizations since 1945, and have agreed upon a national wheat program 

 which we beUeve would be in the best interest of our region and of other wheat 

 regions of the United States. Our recommendations regarding long-range wheat 

 policies were filed with your committee at the hearing in Spokane, Wash., March 

 25, 1948, and are as follows: 



"We recommend, as a matter of long-time policy, minimum governmental 

 controls and regulations and full opportunity for wheat marketing and distribu- 

 tion in the domestic and world markets. 



"We favor the continuance of the policy of maximum production geared to 

 economic use of the Nation's wheat lands. We favor such amendments to the 

 Agricultural Adjustment Act as will carry out these and the following basic 

 objectives. 



1. Full parity for that part of the wheat crop used for domestic human food 

 under some self-supporting plan. 



2. The balance of the wheat crop to move into export and feed and industrial 

 markets at competitive prices. 



3. Use of production controls only when the wheat stocks become larger than 

 permitted by the international wheat agreement." 



Our reasons for supporting such a policy are that we operate in one of the most 

 productive wheat regions in the world. Our region is adjusted to highly mechan- 

 ized large-scale production. It offers no chance for the farmer to shift to other 

 crops. Our experience has led us to believe that our best solution lies in expanding 

 existing markets and finding new ones to absorb surpluses, rather than to embark 

 again upon a program of restricted production. 



Increased costs of machinery and everything else the wheat farmer has to buy, 

 along with increased wages and taxes, however, make it impossible for us to put 

 our wheat on the world market without some protection to our income. We find 

 it necessary, therefore, to have full parity for at least that part of the wheat crop 

 used for human food within the United States. If we can be given this assurance, 

 vv'e would much prefer to continue producing wheat efficiently and sell the surplus 

 into export, feed, or industrial markets at competitive prices; rather than to return 

 to acreage allotments, marketing quotas, and their disrupting influence upon the 

 efficiency of our farming operations. 



Although our organization and the other farm organizations in the Pacific 

 Northwest have recommended this type of a program since 1945, we see no indica- 

 tion that it will be put into operation. In the absence of a self-supporting plan 

 which will give the wheat producer protection on the domestically consumed 

 portion of his crop, we have no alternative other than to insist on adequate price 

 supports in the form of Commodity Credit Corporation loans and purchase 

 agreements. 



An analysis of the Agricultural Act of 1948 indicates that the measure of pro- 

 tection afforded by the so-called flexible provisions, combined with a revised 

 paritj' formula, would result in prices disastrous to wheat producers in the Pacific 

 Northwest and elsewhere. For example, the analysis of this act prepared by the 

 United States Department of Agriculture and published in the Wheat Situation 

 for August 1948, shows that the support price for wheat, even under the extremely 

 high costs of 1948, would have been only $1.33 a bushel as compared with $2 a 

 bushel under the present program. (Of course, we realize that there would be 

 transitional parity for the first few years, but what we are concerned about is the 

 long-range implication of this so-called flexible provision.) Over a period of 

 years, it appears that the support level will be 60 percent of revised parity more 

 often than it would be higher than that figure. There is, of course, another pro- 

 vision whereby a Secretary of Agriculture could put the support up to 90 percent 

 of the new parity, but we cannot depend on that. 



As a compromise between 90 percent of the old parity and the "flexible" percent 

 figure on the new parity, our organization makes this suggestion: If you gentlemen 

 cannot see your way clear to give us the kind of a program which really meets 

 the situation, then we recommend that the price support.s be set at 90 percent of 

 the new parity. This would reduce the price supports on wheat from $2 to $1.64 

 under conditions as they existed in the summer of 1948. While we could continue 

 to operate successfully at such a figure in our. region, we could not possibly pay 

 expenses if the price supports were set at 60 percent of the new parity, which 

 would have put the loan at $1.09 a bushel in 1948. 



For these reasons, the Oregon Wheat Growers League passed the following 

 resolutions at its annual meeting in 1948: 



