GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 981 



Mr. Andresen. We asked them to. 



Mr. Pace. All Democrats do not think this way, but if yon are 

 going to support the American farmer at a fair price and let foreign 

 agriculture and competitive commodities come into this country, 

 you arc going to do two things. You are going to break the bank 

 and you are going to break the farm program. There can be no other 

 result. 



Mr. Andresen. And you will break the country as well. 



Mr. Pace. Well, that'is the bank. 



Mr. Andresen. May I ask a question on the recommendations? 



Mr. Pace. Mr. Andresen. 



Mr. Andresen. I am not quite clear on the last recommendation 

 you made. One, you recommend existing law where we have the 

 support loans. They are loans without recourse, so the Government 

 takes the potatoes. In fact, they make a loan on potatoes and they 

 are nonrecourse loans. Secondly, you recommend either production 

 payments or compensatory payments. It seems to me that what 

 you have recommended there contemplates that you will sell the pota- 

 toes in the open market at the supply and demand level and the 

 Government will pay you the production payment or compensatory 

 payment, the difference between what you got on the market and 

 what you should have, as a reward for complying with part of the 

 program. 



Of course that is a suggestion made by the Secretary of Agriculture 

 in the program that he has presented and for which no bill has been 

 introduced. I had understood your organization to say that you were 

 opposed to the Secretary's program. Are you modifying your pro- 

 gram now so that you are willing to let all potatoes be sold in the open 

 market at the supply-and-demand-level price and then accept pay- 

 ments as proposed by the Secretary? 



Mr. Case. Mr. Congressman, we have taken no stand on any 

 legislation, whether it is the present legislation or the proposed 

 legislation. We have merely suggested that these be incorporated 

 insofar as potatoes are concerned. We can only as a group of potato 

 growers place dependence on the fact that when the Secretary of Agri- 

 culture assigns an acreage goal, in his judgment the production from 

 those acres will be in line with demand so the payments would be low. 



Now, we are ready to go along with that, and we think that the 

 compensatory payment plan, in our judgment, would be a method 

 through which we could whip a noncomplier grower in line. 



Mr. Andresen. I do not agree with you because they can raise 

 potatoes all over the United States during the growing season. Down 

 in my congressional district it would be a simple matter to put in 

 200,000 or 300,000 more acres of potatoes. We are not in the com- 

 mercial potato growing business at all, as you know. 



But if the price of potatoes would be attractive compared with oats 

 and barley and some of these other commodities, with some of that 

 fine land we have down there, it would be no trick at all for a farmer 

 to put in a few acres of potatoes. They could do the same thing all 

 over the Middle West. You would have to have a tremendous estab- 

 lishment if you were to enforce that to stop the new growers from rais- 

 ing and selling potatoes. 



Mr. Case. You would have to depend on the judgment of the 

 potato man in your area, Mr. Congressman. You have seen the 



