636 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



it will not move. If you were getting $100 a bushel and could not 

 sell it, you would soon have it piled so high around your ranch that 

 you would not have any land to farm on. 



Mr. Sutton. My conception of 100 percent of parity is that you 

 are just equal with your manufacturer, your laborer, and all other 

 phases of life, things you have to buy being taken into consideration. 

 In other words, I am just trying to see that the farmer is on a level 

 with everybody else. 



Mr. Kaseberg. I appreciate your point. 



Mr. Pace. Do either of you other two gentlemen want to make 

 any statement? 



Mr. McKiNNis. I will go along a little further with some of the 

 things Mr. Kaseberg said. We are very much afraid of a program 

 where we have to come to Congress each year for money. That is 

 difficult now, and as time goes on it is going to be worse. People 

 get tired of seeing these things in the papers, where the farmers are 

 asking for money to support their crop, money not to raise wheat, 

 money not to raise corn. 



We feel that if a program of this type — maybe not just exactly, 

 because as I say, there is a lot in mechanics — were adopted, where it 

 would be as nearly as possible self-supporting, plus having a very 

 rigid and well-planned conservation program, agriculture could stay 

 on the level that Mr. Sutton is speaking of, and I also feel that the 

 Nation will have enough at stake so that with our well-balanced 

 program of enough food to feed the Nation and enough conservation 

 to insure the feeding of the Nation from this time on, such a program 

 would be well worth while. 



That is all I have. 



Mr. Hope. May I ask a question? 



Mr. Pace. Yes. 



Mr. Hope. Either you or Mr. Kaseberg mentioned the certificate 

 plan as one method of putting a program of this kind into efi^ect. You 

 did not mention what the certificate plan was or how it would work. 



Wliat I understand you to moan is a plan whereby each producer of 

 wheat would be given a certificate which would entitle him to sell so 

 many bushels at the fixed price, whatever it was, 100 percent of parity 

 or 90 percent of parity, and that any miller in ordar to buy wheat for 

 milling would have to purchase one of those certificates before he could 

 buy wheat. He would have to purchase certificates in the total 

 amount of his wheat needs. 



Is that something like what you had in mind? 



Mr. McKiNNis. Yes, I am not too familiar with it, but I have heard 

 a great deal of discussion on it and have more or less of an opinion I 

 will throw out. You were talking a while ago about how you were 

 going to divide up and work this allotment out for human consumption. 

 It seems that we are all pretty close on the amount of wheat that has 

 been used as human food over a period of years. It fluctuates a little, 

 but not a great deal. 



I believe it would be much simpler to administer a program of this 

 kind if you would administer a program to the farmer in terms of 

 bushels instead of acres. It is marked wheat from the time he mar- 

 kets so man}^ bushels with his certificate on them, until it is ground into 

 flour or whatever liapi)ens to it. 



