1118 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



hands of big farmers and land-holders like the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 

 and did little to protect the small family farms which have two-thirds of the 

 farm population. Furthermore, as part of any price and income support program 

 adopted, it is essential to restore to the Commodity Credit Corporation the power 

 to acquire the necessary storage space, so that farmers will not be at the mercy 

 of speculators and dealers at harvesting time. 



PARITY MEANS A FAIR DEAL FOR FARMERS 



In conclusion, I want to clear up a familiar confusion about parity. Parity 

 means what it says: Equality. The purpose of supporting farm product prices at a 

 parity level is to maintain farm purchasing power an a par with the incomes of 

 other groups in the economy. If you cut parity to 90 percent, or 60 percent, or 

 anything less than 100 percent, you are eliminating parity; you are telling the 

 farmers they can't have equality. That is morally wrong and economically 

 dangerous to the whole economj-, for the reasons I outlined earlier in this state- 

 ment. 



It has been all too easy for processors and distributors to hide behind a veil of 

 confusion about the price-support program first enacted by the New Deal Con- 

 gress in 1933. They blame farmers for rising food prices — ignoring the fact that 

 parity levels rise only insofar as industry raises its prices to farmers. Just as city 

 workers must have wage increases to meet rising living costs, so farmers must have 

 higher parity price levels to keep up with rising prices for the things they buy from 

 manufacturers. The parity formula is simply a sort of farmers' minimum-wage 

 law, tying farm prices to farm costs. As long as corporations like International 

 Harvester insist in raising the costs of tractors and farm equipment — there was a 

 9-percent increase just last September — as long as the fertilizer trust keeps fertilizer 

 prices high; as long as Standard Oil and its associates in the petroleum industry 

 raise fuef prices — as long as these big cjrporations continue to hno<t their prics-s, 

 then the pari! y levels will automatically rise. This ought to be so obvious that it 

 shouldn't need to be spelled out. But many obvious things are overlooked these 

 days. 



in 1932, farmers' prices fell to 55 percent of parity. That was a year in which 

 223,000 farms were foreclosed and 12,000,000 people were unemployed. Let's not 

 indulge in the criminal folly of letting that happen again. 



Statement of H. E. Sanford, Chairman, National Grain Trade Council 



That National Grain Trade Council represents 6 Nation-wide grain and feed 

 associations, and 27 organized boards of trade or grain exchanges, spread from 

 Boston to Los Angeles. On behalf of these members, we thank the committee 

 for this opportunity to discuss farm legislation. 



We have been deeply interested in the seminar you have been holding, and 

 particularly in the proposals made recently by Secretary of Agriculture, Charles 

 Brannan. We welcome his fresh approach to this subject because it has excited 

 wide interest. Public acceptance is essential to the lasting success of any farm 

 program. 



It should be said at the start that grain trade opinion 'is not unanimous regarding 

 farm legislation. It is apparent that the same situation exists elsewhere: in other 

 agricultural industries, in farm groups, in the Congress, and even within the De- 

 partment of Agriculture itself. We hope the committee will recognize this state- 

 ment therefore, as an attempt to convey only the very general character of an 

 industry's thinking. 



We believe the Secretary's recommendations merit earnest appraisal of the 

 method and support level that he suggests. 



METHOD of support 



Production payments are advocated as a primary means of income support to 

 producers of nonstorable commodities. These are estimated to constitute 75 

 percent of cash farm receipts and include such items as fruits, vegetables, meat 

 animals, milk, butterfat, poultry, and eggs. 



Production payments would be the difference between the average market price 

 received by all producers and the calculated income support price. 



