GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 1169 



Secretary Brannan. Mr. Chairman, it has to be anticipated— and 

 very rationally, I think — that the use of production payments would 

 encourage each producer to try to bargain for the best possible price 

 in the market place and to produce the best possible quality of hogs, 

 because it is not a differential between what he got in the market 

 place and the support standard, but he gets the difference between 

 the average of all of them, and if the differential is $3 between the 

 average and the support level, and that $3, let us say, represents $12 

 or $14 and the particular individual comes into the market and, by 

 good bargaining or selecting the day of his marketing, can.get $14.25, 

 then his net for that year on his marketing is $3.25. 



Mr. Pace. Or better than the support price. 



Secretary Brannan. He is getting better than the support price, 

 which is an encouragement rather than an opposition. 



Mr. Pace. One other question and I am done. If the committee 

 should authorize the hog program as covered by H. R. 4485, would 

 it or not be feasible for the committee to put in there some authority 

 whereby, if necessity arose, you could have some voice in the market- 

 ing? I mean to say, I am told that, without rhyme or reason always, 

 there is always a rush to market at a certain period; that there is 

 usually a rush to market on Monday of each week and that that 

 contributes, where the supply is abundant, gi'eatly to the breaking of 

 the price. Do you feel the need, would you want the authority, even 

 though it is quite limited, where you could persuade producers not 

 to flood the market on one day and whereby there could be orderly 

 marketing throughout the country? 



Secretary Brannan. I agree with the premise you just stated, that, 

 unfortunately, producers do come into the market in bulk at times 

 when it would be smart for them to have the marketing in the aggre- 

 gate on a more orderly pattern. But I have misgivings about the 

 Department of Agriculture or anybody else trying to tell them when 

 to market. The only approach that I feel we ought to try to make 

 to it would be through normal educational channels, through the use 

 of the Extension Service and the other production and marketing 

 facilities that we have for getting good information into the hands 

 of farmers. 



Mr. Pace. I am certainly not going to press the point, but I can 

 see little difference in having marketing quotas where you can tell 

 roe that I cannot plant but 10 acres of cotton and, in turn, where 

 you have no marketing quotas but have a support price program, of 

 at least telling the producer to be reasonable about his marketing 

 methods, to be efficient about them, and do not dump all of his product 

 oh the market in one day. I do not see any difference between the 

 control features, and I do not see that one is any more unreasonable 

 than the other. I realize the packers probably would complain, but 

 what if they do? They have never produced a hog throughout their 

 experience. 



I am not going to press the point, but I can see no great objection to 

 at least asking the producers to keep within reasonable limitations, 

 the same as you ask those you put under marketing quotas to keep 

 within reasonable limitations. 



Secretary Brannan. I would like to make clear if such language is 

 in the provisions we would do our very best to administer them in the 

 most equitable and efficient way we could. 



