732 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



You say, Mr. Woolley, that if the Department has authority to do 

 it, you will go ahead and hold a referendam on marketing quotas, 

 providing quotas are proclaimed, before the 25th of July? 



Mr. WooLLEY. That is correct. 



Mr. Hope. The question I want to raise and on which I would 

 like to have the comments of any of the representatives of the Depart- 

 ment is whether that is a good time to hold a referendum. My 

 reason for questioning it is that it will come at a time when all the 

 wheat farmers will have just received their acreage allotments. I am 

 assuming that you cannot proclaim them before the 1st of July and 

 by the time they get out to the State committees and the county 

 committees and the county committees make the adjustments and 

 check them over, it is going to be very difficult, it seems to me, to 

 get them in the hands of the local committees much before the election 

 would be called. 



If. they have just gotten into the hands of the growers, they are 

 going to be very much disturbed becuase they are going to take a cut. 

 They are all going to be more or less dissatisfied and they will be 

 comparing their cuts with their neighbors and with those made in 

 some other county. It seems to me that many producers will not be 

 in a particularly good frame of mind to vote on this question at tliaf 

 time. 



Furthermore, they will not know what the situation is gomg to be 

 with respect to the world supply of wheat a year from now. They 

 will be voting practically a year ahead of the time when the marketing 

 quotas will go into effect. There will be no way of knowing what 

 the world situation is a year from now. They all know that we have 

 had some mighty good weather and wheat crops for a period of years. 

 We may have worse weather and there will be no need for quotas. 

 I am wondering if marketing quotas may not be voted down. I am 

 not basing that on my own opinion altogether. I have been in touch 

 with farmers out in the wheat sections and they tell me that. They 

 think under the circumstances I've described marketing quotas may 

 be voted down. 



If marketing quotas are voted down, there will be no price supports 

 on wheat next year. If the Aiken bill went into effect, there would 

 be price supports at 50 percent of parity, but that is not very much 

 in the way of price supports. I think the price should probably be 

 equal to that in any event. I think we ought to very seriously con- 

 sider the question as to whether or not it is a good time to vote on 

 marketing quotas for wheat. 



Under the old law, we had 2 years in which there were marketing 

 quotas on wheat and in which elections were held in the spring before 

 June 10. In both of those cases, the farmers had an opportunity to 

 see what the situation was and they voted for marketing quotas. 

 Marketing quotas went into effect and I have little doubt in my own 

 mind that if next year the world and domestic situation indicated 

 that marketing quotas were going to be necessary to carry out a price- 

 support program the farmers would go ahead and vote for them. 



I know the question has been raised that if you do not have a vote 

 on marketing quotas this fall and do not have marketing quotas in 

 effect, so that farmers will know that they are going to be confronted 

 with marketing quotas, you may have many farmers dissatisfied with 



