GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 697 



Mr. Sutton. We did not have so much under 90 percent parity 

 did we? 



Air. Hughes. That is what we are operating under right now, and 

 we do have. In fact, I can refer you back to a year ago when they 

 had a break of 10 cents a day for 3 or 4 days. 



Air. Sutton. That was in the supply on hand that you refer to 

 there, though, was it not — the surphis on hand? 



Air. Hughes. Yes. I beheve you are stating it is the supply that 

 makes that speculation possible rather than the support price. 



Air. Sutton. Do not you feel deep down inside that the farmer 

 would be helped if he hacl 90 percent parity instead of 60 or 70 percent 

 parity? 



Air. Hughes. I do not think there is any doubt that he would be 

 helped. Possibly he would be helped in his income, but the farmer is 

 a man who likes to feel he has some responsibility of his own, and I 

 do not think he wants to be guaranteed a certain schedule of income 

 regardless of what he does. I think he sb.ould accept some i-esponsi- 

 bdity to keep the suppl}^ in line with the demand, and under this flex- 

 ible system he has that trouble. 



Air. Sutton. Do you think on a referendum of the farmers of the 

 country they would vote for flexible price support rather than 90 

 percent parity? 



Air. Hughes. I am not in any position to make a statement on that. 

 Air. Sutton. \Vliat is your personal opinion? 



Air. Hughes. I would hesitate even to make a personal statement 

 on that. I just do not feel capable of making a statement as broad as 

 that. 



Air. A'luRRAY. Let me say first I am really an outsider in this. I 

 come from a dairj'^ State. We are underpaid from 30 to GO cents per 

 hundredweight for our milk under the present law. So I have great 

 difficulty in projecting mj'self too far into the future. I would like to 

 get the. present law fulfilled; the Agriculture Department has not been 

 able +o do so up to this time. But there are one or two things about 

 the support program, and my personal opinion is that we are going to 

 support ourselves right out of support one of these days if we are not 

 careful. 



I would like to ask why it is that we do not support on the basis of 

 bushels rather than on the basis of acreage and allocate the bup-hels 

 back to the States on the historical basis and let them trickle down to 

 the counties and let the people themselves who are raising the crops — - 

 wheat in this instance — have a little something to say about working 

 out the problem. "VMiat is the reason why we do not have any pro- 

 posal to support on the basis of bushels? 



Air. Hughes. I would answer you this wa}^: We had some discus- 

 sion on that in the Omaha meeting, but we did not feel like making 

 any recommendation to this group, for the reason that the other 

 program was mainly based on acreage, and we felt we were not compe- 

 tent to determine the result of the program on one crop under bushel 

 considerations and other crops under acreage considerations. We 

 felt that such a recommendation should some through come group 

 where all of those different crops and those things would be correlated 

 and determined. That is something that recjuires a lot of stud3^ and 

 research. 



