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don't know of any other business but what has to cut back, shut down furnaces, or something like that. I think we just have to make up our minds we are going to do it and how we are going to do it and

wade into it.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you given it sufficient study to tell us whether it shall be on the overall acreage?

Mr. WINGATE. Absolutely, and the only way you can do it.

The CHAIRMAN. Shall it be on a selective basis or let the farmer take out the acres he thinks ought to be taken out?

Mr. WINGATE. No, sir; I think you cannot go there and just take out his nonproductive acres. You cannot do that. You have to take at least an average of part of his good and part of the other. The CHAIRMAN. Do you propose to pay him a compensation for that per acre?

Mr. WINGATE. Yes, sir; and that has been the big struggle in our arguments up in our group. Some of the boys were determined that they were going to force them in there if we got it and take it out anyhow. We are in agreement it will cost something and we must go in and do the job.

The CHAIRMAN. Even in your own organization there is contention? Mr. WINGATE. It is congealing.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope it does.

Mr. WINGATE. The tighter this squeeze the closer together we are getting.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us get it from Mr. Wingate now, the fine farmer from Georgia: How many acres would you set aside and who would determine that, and how much would you suggest that the Government assume the cost of setting aside such acreage as you think or may be determined as necessary to get out of circulation?

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, I would have to shoot from the hip and I don't mind. I would say take at least 40 million acres out of production.

The CHAIRMAN. About 10 percent.

Mr. WINGATE. Ten percent of the land. You can study our surplus condition and we can get at it, but I would say that is about right. I would say that the Government, in the condition we are in today, the Government should lease that land from us at a fair rate and let us put soil-building practices into effect there. Let us lease it for at least 3 to 5 years; not just 1 or 2 years.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a formula as to how the Government is to reach a figure for payment on these acres that you take out of production?

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, you have different ways. You have values

The CHAIRMAN. What would you suggest?

Mr. WINGATE. It would have to be done back on the local level. It couldn't be done from Washington. That never would work. You have to come down to the local level, the county committeemen that know values and let them appraise it.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you place that on a date of return on the value of the land, plus taxes?

Mr. WINGATE. I would place it on-people in those sections, you will find a lot that rent land and you have different type lands being

rented and you would have a good cross section. I think you could get at it in a very good way.

The CHAIRMAN. Some have suggested that we go so far as to give to the farmer a certain percentage of what we would have produced on that acre. Would you agree to that or do you think we should consider it?

Mr. WINGATE. I would hate to figure in the last 3 or 4 years and give me what I made on mine. I would rather rent it straight out because I have lost money. I just wouldn't get anything. I think to just place it on a rental basis

The CHAIRMAN. Assuming we set aside 10 percent of the acreage, would you have the basics or any other crops planted along the same line we have been proposing?

Mr. WINGATE. Under control?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. WINGATE. You would have to keep the basics under control maybe a good while, but I think maybe a pretty long time, and you might be in and out of them. But our big problem is when we cut the acreage for basics the farmer is going to put it into something else and there is not a crop I know of that is not in a mess. You can plant it in anything and it gets into a worse mess. We have to make across-the-board basics and nonbasics and all.

The CHAIRMAN. Assuming we take out of cultivation 10 percent, what would be your plan for this coming year for the cotton farmers? How much less acreage would you plant to cotton this year if the proposal of, say 10 percent, were adopted?

Mr. WINGATE. I think we should be realistic here in this. I don't think we are gong to be able to get this bill passed in January in time to catch these crops. I wish we could. Do you think we would have if we could

The CHAIRMAN. That is what we are striving for and why we are out here working to get information. We have before us today, before the committee, a bill passed by the House reinstating the rigid 90-percent supports without any changes.

Mr. WINGATE. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, as I indicated before the committee, that in itself will not do the job. That is why we are out here trying to get new methods if we can find them in order to make this program work.

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, let me be honest with you about this. I don't believe it is humanly possible to get this real big job done here in that short a time. You know how things move along.

The CHAIRMAN. If we cannot, we are going to have flexible supports, which you say will not do the job. That is the point. We have to act not next year, but this year if the next crop is to be affected.

Mr. WINGATE. We have passed some laws up there that cost your State some cotton acreage. We changed this law every year and got caught in Georgia and didn't get but 73 percent of our acreage planted; and another year we changed it and didn't get but 80 percent planted, and that is moving cotton out. I don't want to see that happen any more that late. I am ready to go to work on it, but I am afraid this big job going back to the House can't be done in time to catch it. As far as 90 percent, we can make that retroactive. You can kill this sliding scale right here if you get the bill passed before the crop is planted.

The CHAIRMAN. We have to be realistic. If we go to Congress today and pass 90 percent price supports, in my humble judgment it would be vetoed. That would not solve the problem. We have to add something new that will be acceptable to this administration. That is my judgment.

I want to try, as chairman of this committee, to make every effort to get a bill out that will become law and will affect next year's crop. That is what I am trying to do.

Mr. WINGATE. I will join you and we will, and I don't want to throw any damper on it but it is going to move faster than things have been moving. I have had a lot of experience up there.

The CHAIRMAN. If we wait on the Farm Bureau and some other organization it may be next year or the year after before we do it, but we will not wait for that. We have gone around this country trying to get ideas and it is my hope that the committee itself will act and our views will be followed by the organizations throughout the Nation. Mr. WINGATE. We won't argue with you. I am ready to join you and push this thing through just as rapidly as it is humanly possible. Senator YOUNG. Mr. Wingate, if we took 40 million acres of land out of production quite a large percentage of that would have to be planted to grass, would it not?

Mr. WINGATE. Yes, soil-building crops.

Senator YOUNG. Would we not be limited by the amount of grass seed available as to the amount of acres we could take out? Some of the land taken out of production could be put to other soil-conserving practices but I suppose a sizable part of it would have to be seeded to sweetclover or grass seeds.

Mr. WINGATE. Yes, sir.

Senator YOUNG. If we took out of production, say, 20 million acres, I suppose that 5 million acres would have to be seeded in order to produce enough grass seed to take additional acres out of production? Mr. WINGATE. Yes.

Senator YOUNG. In that respect it would create the need of producing still another crop in much larger volume than we are now, that of grass seed.

Mr. WINGATE. Definitely so. It is something they could step into, Senator, and you would have to expand it very, very fast and it would be a good farmer's crop to produce, the grass seed, the cloverseed, all those things.

Senator YOUNG. In my area sweet clover is a good soil-conserving crop and if you do not harvest it within 2 or 3 weeks after the leaves are off of it it is no longer good for livestock feed but it does make good wildlife cover.

We have had a lot of testimony from witnesses urging that we place the control of production on bushels or bales or other units such as that rather than on acres.

Have you given any thought to that?

Mr. WINGATE. Other than every time we discuss it, I think that is one of the worst things we run into, and I don't think we want to go back to it because when you set the number of bushels a man can sell off his acreage and let him shoot at that, you have the farmer in the worst mess you can put him in. It just won't work. You are going to discourage progress. That is my way of looking at it.

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I don't think you can put it down on balage. If we were running a machine out here and turning out plow points we know just how far and if you tell me how many I can produce I would run up to that and cut the machine off. But when you tell me I can sell so many bales and I don't know how many I will make, under the same conditions, that makes a bad deal for the farmer as I see it.

Senator YOUNG. If he produced too many bales or too many bushels he would have to cut down his production the year after.

Mr. WINGATE. Yes, sir.

Senator YOUNG. Or if he had a poor crop this year and did not produce enough bales he would have a bigger allotment next year. Mr. WINGATE. The best the Government can guess they guess wrong about 2 million bales a year. They started off with 13 million and now it is up to 15 million.

Senator YOUNG. I have a vast respect for your judgment on farm matters.

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, I don't think when you go to figuring what a man can produce and have him figure it out-it is hard and I don't believe it would be a good deal.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wingate, assuming that it is possible to set aside this 40 million acres, what would be the minimum cotton acreage you would suggest be planted in this country?

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, first I would have to say this. We are going to make up our mind if we are going to sell any in foreign countries and if we are, decide about what, and I would go right along.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the method now. That is how we determine it.

Mr. WINGATE. I know it is, but your State Department right up there, with all due respect to them, it is about as rotten as I ever heard of. I don't know of anything that could be worse.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what we are confronted with. Last year it became so bad that this year it was my privilege as chairman of this committee to appoint a subcommittee headed by my friend, Senator Eastland, and this subcommittee discovered that there were a lot of roadblocks placed in the way whereby the State Department interfered with the sale of some of these commodities.

Mr. WINGATE. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything specific you could suggest to stop that?

Mr. WINGATE. The only thing-to stop the State Department.
The CHAIRMAN. I mean-

Mr. WINGATE. Yes, sir; I have one for that, too.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you cut their salaries off or how would you handle it? It is an administrative matter, you know. It is something done from the President on down. They say they want it that way.

Mr. WINGATE. I tell you what, if more of us as Senators, Congressmen, and farm leaders will burn their hides off all over the country.

The CHAIRMAN. You cannot move them.

Mr. WINGATE. They are scared of politics. We should tell the world what they are doing. That is a bad situation.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no doubt about it, that we could move it, but another thing you must consider is the subsidy that would

have to be paid by the Government. You add all that up together and you have a lot of problems that confront us.

Mr. WINGATE. The reason I bring that in about the State Department is if it is going on that way I would have to figure out with it running that way. If we get it so we can move stuff into the markets we would figure a little different story. Regardless, we should have an acreage that will run along in line with our production, domestic and foreign consumption.

Senator EASTLAND. Is it not true if we get a law to give us an export sales program the State Department cannot block it?

Mr. WINGATE. I wouldn't say that, Senator.

Senator EASTLAND. I will say it.

Mr. WINGATE. I don't know. I hope you can. We would be ready to join it.

Senator EASTLAND. We can pass a law and order it sold. How can the State Department block it?

Mr. WINGATE. If I want to get something done like I want it I would rather let you pass the law and let me administer it.

The CHAIRMAN. We have no assurance that even if we pass a law that the President will sign it.

Mr. WINGATE. I agree.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. I apologize for not having been here. I was held up on a long-distance telephone call.

How would you get rid of these surpluses which are, of course, our difficulty?

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, I mentioned this. That the Government took terrific losses in getting rid of surpluses for industry that they put there, scared we would have an all-out war and they piled up a lot of them and the War Production Board sold over $42 billion worth of surplus stuff for less than $7 billion and took a terrific loss.

I say we will have to move this stuff into market even if it takes a subsidy.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. The reason I asked that question is because, first, you would envision changing the present law wherein we have the 105 percent parity limitation plus carrying costs; would that have to be changed?

Mr. WINGATE. Not to sell foreign.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Domestically?

Mr. WINGATE. I couldn't recommend that. I certainly wouldn't recommend that you make a change in your domestic setup. Senator SCHOEPPEL. I am asking you.

Mr. WINGATE. No, sir; I wouldn't do that. I was talking about the foreign, getting rid of it in foreign countries. We have to subsidize there. I am opposed to subsidizes in this country.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Now let me ask you this: Have you or your organization-I know you must have checked into the condition of some of the surpluses? Take for instance, wheat. I doubt whether 30 percent of the wheat that the Government owns is good millable wheat. That is tragic as far as I am concerned, to pile up a type of wheat that is not wanted in human consumption.

Would you advocate turning some of that loose for feed in any part of the United States at all?

Mr. WINGATE. Senator, there is a world of it not fit for anything but feed. We have to get it to feed. The quicker you get those poor, off

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