982 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



time when your potatoes were not worth digging. That is true, is 

 it not? 



Mr. Andresen. I have seen the time when potatoes were selling 

 for 20 cents a bushel. 



Mr. Case. That is right. Would the man who was going to plant 

 these 300,000 acres have that in the back of his mind? Obviously the 

 Department is not required to pay on that acreage. 



Mr. Andrese^t. He will do it for 1 year, you see, and the price 

 will go down. We will say it goes down 30 or 40 cents a bushel, which 

 it may. Then he will say, Well, that is not bringing in as much money 

 as oats or barley, so the next year he will not go into that. 



Mr. Pace. He does not have to do that. He has the benefit of 

 this man's 60 percent support. 



Mr. Andresen. But under the compensatory payment plan, all 

 potatoes will be dumped on the market to bring what they can. 



Mr. Case. That is right. He might only get 20 cents a bushel for 

 them, sir. 



Mr. Andresen. We are going to have two programs here. 



Mr. Pace. Are we talking about compensatory payments between 

 20 cents a bushel and 60 percent of parity? This is getting into big 

 money. 



Mr. Case. If he is going to increase 300,000 acres in Minnesota 

 and everybody else does the same thing, it will be. But I again say 

 that it is the opinion of the potato men that if a man knew that he 

 had to sell his potatoes on the market for what they would bring, 

 he would think twice about overplanting. 



Today's costs of production are tremendous, gentlemen. We were 

 talking about it last night. Some of the boys are paying up to $300 

 an acre in production cost to produce a crop of potatoes. The margin 

 of profit is very small. Granted, Mr. Andresen, maybe some of these 

 men will not appreciate that imtil it actually happens to them or it 

 may take one bad year to wake them up. 



Mr. Andresen. We would not have 300,000 acres in one place, of 

 course. 



Mr. Case. That is right. Let me go back to one more thing. 

 We do not understand the controls that have been thrown in here. 

 We have been in the habit of thinking in terms of marketing agree- 

 ments as a control measure. We have accepted acreage allotments. 

 We are anxious to devise a method through which the noncompliers 

 will be forced out of the picture or forced in line. 



We have not said we would not consider marketing quotas, and the 

 statement I just read you said that we would make a study of them. 



Mr. Pace. Let me show you how simple marketing quotas are as 

 compared to what you suggested, leaving marketing agreement out 

 for the moment. You suggested goals or acreage allotments. You 

 get an acreage allotment, do you not? You do the same thing with 

 the marketing quotas. You get 60 to 90 percent support. You get 

 the same thing under marketing quotas. There is only one thing in 

 addition that marketing quotas mean. If you had a goal of 20 acres 

 and you planted 30, when you marketed the potatoes grown on that 

 extra 10 acres you would have to pay a penalty of one-half of the 

 support. That means if the support was 60 percent of parity and you 

 sold the potatoes ofl^ the extra 10 acres you would have to pay a penalty 

 equal to 30 percent of parity. That is all there is to it. 



