( 91 ) 



program. The consumer wants all the livestock products he 

 can get, and the nutritionists have told him he should have 

 them. Livestockmen are enjoying their place in the sun and 

 can outvote the cash-grain farmers. OPA is for low corn 

 prices, unwittingly thinking that it will help prevent infla- 

 tion. Being popular with everybody, the livestock expansion 

 program is popular with the administration. The likelihood 

 is that the nation will keep pouring its feed reserves into 

 livestock until they are gone. Our livestock policy, like our 

 policy on farm labor, crop acreage, and machinery, will be 

 changed the hard way. 



Livestock Expansion Cannot Continue 



The combination of rising prices, advancing purchasing 

 power, increasing numbers, unusually good pastures, abun- 

 dant supplies of roughage and grains for winter feed, and the 

 unusually favorable feed-price ratios extending over several 

 years for all the important types of livestock is unparalleled 

 in the agricultural history of the United States. Much of this 

 pyramid will topple like a house of cards during 1943 or 1944 

 unless a benevolent Providence provides an abundant supply 

 of moisture properly distributed throughout the growing sea- 

 son for both pastures and feed crops for all the important 

 pasture and crop-producing areas of the United States. The 

 weatherman will name the date of the liquidation. The poorer 

 the weather, the quicker the liquidation. 



Such liquidation will be accompanied by an immediate 

 increase in meat supplies. By many people this will be con- 

 sidered an increase in production and a cause for rejoicing. 

 The increased supplies will not be due to increased produc- 

 tion; they will be due to liquidation of the farmers' "ever 

 normal granaries," livestock on the hoof. The increasing sup- 

 plies will be the forerunner of decreasing production. 



Our livestock policy contains the remnants of a scarcity 



