770 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



represent the bulk of the movement, the spread is oridinarily much 

 greater between the top and the bottom grades. It would be a 

 difficult, expensive, and, we think, an impossible operation to attempt 

 to keep track of all the transactions which even in the case of a 

 medium-sized operator might involve numerous sales running from 

 a single animal up to one or more carloads. 



Under the OPA there was a limited application of direct subsidy- 

 payments to feeders of cattle and to producers of lambs and dauy 

 products. The experience then gained indicated that uncertainties 

 over the application of the subsidy payments tended to confuse both 

 the producers and the processors and we think -the net result, if 

 attempted on a large scale as here proposed, would reduce pro- 

 duction rather than stimulate it. 



We call attention to the fact that the Secretary stated that 2 percent 

 of the farms or ranches would be excluded from the income support 

 standards established, and that he further stated this same 2 percent 

 sold almost 25 percent of the entire farm products marketed. We 

 believe that in the cattle ranching business, a very much greater per- 

 centage of all the units would fall in this class than in the average of 

 all farms. A cattle operation which would come within the 1,800 

 units prescribed, even if nothing else were produced, would be con- 

 sidered a small ranching operation. It would hardly be an economic 

 unit and many of the ranches throughout the whole range country 

 produce substantially more than the minimum established and yet, 

 as stated above, are not considered large and in many cases, not even 

 medium-sized operations. 



We question the effectiveness of any attempt to control a given 

 commodity when as much as 25 percent of the production of that 

 commodity is not covered by the proposed control program. 



We think the program would discourage the feeding of cattle, par- 

 ticularly in commercial feed lots which are a substantial factor in beef 

 production. All such operations would be excluded from the support 

 level by the small maximum. They produce beef on a year round 

 Ijasis, while the farm feeding is much more seasonal, and the bulk of 

 farm fed cattle are marketed in time for the farmer to get at his 

 spring work. 



In the irrigated valleys of the West and on many Corn Belt farms 

 the total production of an average 160-acre farm far exceeds the 1,800 

 unit level. The cost of unit production on these irrigated farms is 

 necessarily high and the output likewise must be high. Feeding live- 

 stock is an essential part of that operation. 



At the same time that there is danger that cattle feeding would be 

 discouraged, as indicated above, it would appear that the reduction of 

 acres planted to corn, wheat, and other crops necessary to prevent 

 serious surpluses, would result in increased production of stocker and 

 feeder cattle not suitable for immediate slaughter. In the Corn Belt, 

 shifts can be made from one crop to another at will. In the range- 

 cattle-producing country of the West and South we have no such 

 alternative. Grass is the main crop and if overproduction of cattle 

 were brought about by a shift from grain and other crops to grass in 

 the Corn Belt, it would create some very difficult problems in the range 

 country. Much livestock is run on public lands, the land under the 

 control of the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and 

 the Soil Conservation Service, and these are all on a definite permitted- 



