Mr. BROOKSHIRE. He is entitled, if you allot the acreage of cattle raisers; yes, sir.

Senator EASTLAND. You know that all these diverted acres that we are going to bring about an overproduction of needs on-you know that is what is going to happen, do you not?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Well, it has; that is one of the results of it.
Senator EASTLAND. Certainly.

Now, you have got an overproduction there.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Eliminate, cut my production, and cut the other man's production down, if it is

Senator EASTLAND. I just wanted-I am not fussing with you—I just wanted to find out if you were advocating a program that would apply to you, or if you were advocating exempting yourself and taking somebody else's property.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. No, sir. I have not asked for an exemption on anything

Senator EASTLAND. But you are exempted from your own program, you say?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. We have no price supports on our program. Senator EASTLAND. Yes.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. During World War II we had a ceiling, but we certainly did not have any base on it.

Senator EASTLAND. I understand.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I do think that under this program we should reduce the tillable land 10 percent; that should be payments made for the feed-it is for his benefit, the farmer, as much as anybody else's, and it is up to him to see that that seed is planted and is properly cared for, but no payment.

The CHAIRMAN. When you say 10 percent, you do not have the diverted acres in mind, do you?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. No. That is 10 percent of the whole arable land in the United States, regardless of what it is. You can apply it to ranching. If you want to apply it to ranching, I will be glad to comply with it because I think it would be a solution to some of the ranchers' ills, but I am not up here advocating any help for the ranchers.

The CHAIRMAN. Does your program differ from those suggested, I think, by two witnesses, one with the Farm Bureau, and the other, another association?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I got part of it back there, and part of it-part of the farm bureau program I could not understand.

The CHAIRMAN. I see; very well, proceed.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. And I think the only way that this thing can be carried out is by rigid controls. I do not think you can leave it to a bunch of farmers, or to anybody else, except trained technicians, to see that this program is carried out.

Senator EASTLAND. Where have rigid controls gotten us, where have they gotten the cotton farmer? They have gotten him the biggest surplus in history. It has caused an acreage expansion in Mexico where they will produce 2 million bales of cotton a year; it has caused an acreage expansion in Central America; it has caused it in Latin America.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I understand all that.

Senator EASTLAND. What has control solved except to pauperize agriculture.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Well, controls have done the same thing for business agriculture that your tariffs have done for the big manufacturer. Senator EASTLAND. Well, as we have cut our cotton acreage 20 percent, it has not done a thing but increase the acreage south of the border 20 percent; has it not?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I understand that Mexico and Central America have

Senator EASTLAND. Well, the things are growing wild.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. We are sending technicians down there to train them.

Senator EASTLAND. That is right.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. And it is probably right we should do it.
Senator EASTLAND. But what have controls gained us?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Sure it has not gained us anything, because we have not had the proper approach to controls, Senator. That is my idea of it.

Senator EASTLAND. I would like to have your approach.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it not a fact that in 1950-51, we had marketing quotas on cotton, and we were able to reduce production from the year before, when we had 16,128,000 bales, and we put the marketing quota on in 1950-51, and it was reduced to 10 million bales; that is a difference of 6 million bales. Then the war came on, good weather came on, everything else, and the Government said, "Grow everything you can.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. That is where you invested-why put that on 90 percent, 100 percent, or what have you? It was just that we had good weather and the Government asked that we produce it.

Senator EASTLAND. That is correct. We have added 2 million bales to it this year.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. O. K.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes.

Senator EASTLAND. That is a million bales last year.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right, but when the lid was off in 1951, there were almost 27 million acres harvested and we produced 15 million bales. In 1952, and again with the lid off, there were about 26 million acres harvested and we still produced 15 million bales. In 1953-54

Senator EASTLAND. What was the take?

The CHAIRMAN. I will tell you in a minute. We had over 16 million bales with only 24 million plus acres harvested.

The Lord only knows what caused that difference. It was simply good weather and maybe the use of a little more fertilizer.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Take last year-that is, the 1954 crop year-we had a marketing quota and we were able to cut production by a little over 3 million bales. This year we will do the same thing. If this program were permitted to operate, it seems to me that we might be able to bring our production down.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I think that we can, Senator. I think that is the only way to bring the production down; to limit this not in acreage

but in pounds or bales or bushels, or whatever your commodity, that is, your basic commodity is.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you do it?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. If you put it in acres, the farmer will be given a smaller allotment of acres. He is going to increase and plant land that will produce the most.

One of my neighbors, I heard him say just this week, used to plant 1,000 acres in cotton and this had been cut to 500, and next year it will be cut to 300, he figured. He said: "I do not give a d”

He said, "I will buy more fertilizer, produce the same amount of cotton."

Senator EASTLAND. Is not the solution to it, so far as cotton is concerned, moving in on this Mexican production and moving in on this Central American production, and not only meeting them competitively, but do better than that to get their markets away from them? You know markets determine farm value; is that not correct?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. No. I think the economy of the country where the product is produced ought to help determine the price that the farmer gets for the commodity that he grows.

Senator EASTLAND. I said that markets determine the farm value. Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Surely.

Senator EASTLAND. I think that is a sound principle.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I know that they do on land.

Senator EASTLAND. Certainly.

The CHAIRMAN. Now with the labor market protected as it is in the United States, how could we compete with Mexico?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. You cannot, except

The CHAIRMAN. Of course not.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. By the intelligence of the type of farmers that produce crops. That is the very thing that I am attempting to bring to the attention of this committee, but if you eliminate this family farm operator, you are eliminating the potential producers of our food and fiber in this country.

Senator EASTLAND. I agree with you.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. The American farmer can produce food and fiber cheaper than any other country in the world.

Senator EASTLAND. That is right.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. But he cannot do it with all of the things that he buys on a protected market and to sell on an open market; that is, in the world.

Senator EASTLAND. Is it not true that the unit cost of farm production in this country compares very favorably with that abroad, because our farms are more mechanized?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is true.

Senator EASTLAND. And farmers produced. Is their unit production per hour greater?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. Why cannot we sell our cotton, if that is true? Senator EASTLAND. Because we are holding it above the world price. The CHAIRMAN. Just a minute, could you produce it cheaper than it is now being produced?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I probably could, Senator.
The CHAIRMAN. On a mechanized farm?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. On a mechanized farm, a business-operated farm, it can be done. We have farmers last year where we had a reasonable rainfall in our area, in some of our farms that were operated, the business-type farm operators made as much as $100,000.

Senator EASTLAND. Senator Ellender has asked a question that I think should be answered.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. What is the question?

Senator EASTLAND. That is, could our farmers compete with these farmers abroad? Is it not a fact that foreign countries all manipulate their currencies?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is right.

Senator EASTLAND. And export and subsidize exports in order to woo American farm markets, and that they have had the support of our State Department, and that it is not a point that our farmers should be called upon to compete with the acts of a foreign government. In fact, these foreign farmers are not competing with us, but it is their government that is reducing their prices, and the government is pocketing the loss. Now, do you not think that we have to meet that?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I think so, and I think that 90 percent parity would help meet that until this thing is worked out. I do not believe in parity, for parity's sake. I think that when the supply and demand is dropped, a fair price for a commodity is preferable to a subsidy, and I think that is what the farmer wants.

Senator EASTLAND. How much extra tax does Mexico charge? Take a cotton farmer. How much export tax does an export farmer have to pay in Mexico to sell cotton?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I do not know, Senator.

Senator EASTLAND. Does anybody know? Is it not $35 a bale, sir? (From the floor somebody said "$20.")

The CHAIRMAN. Whatever it is, there is an export tax.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I will say this: They are not only getting the advantage of our farmers but they are wooing a bunch of our better farmers, young farmers, to come to Mexico and to Central America. to produce cotton. We have lost several cotton producers.

Senator EASTLAND. And they are taking them out of Mississippi. Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Yes, sir. I do not think that controls can be maintained. I think it is a stopgap for this partaicular time, and when agriculture is on its knees. When it gets back in a normal economy, agriculture gets back into that normal economy, they ought to be removed.

Senator EASTLAND. Is not agriculture on its knees?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Sir?

Senator EASTLAND. Is not agriculture on its knees because our State Department has built up these foreign industries and then stands guard to protect them?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Gentlemen, you are asking me a question that you are more competent to answer than I am, because I have been working night and day, 7 days a week, for the past 6 years, trying to pay taxes. I do not owe anything on my farms or ranches. I have had to struggle to meet taxes and operations have been such that I have not had time to study the State Department, but I know that these controls should be maintained until our economy-that is, our farm economyreaches a stabilized place.

Senator EASTLAND. Sure, we have to have controls but the emphasis has got to be on expanding markets; has it not?

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I do not know, Senator. Right after the war, while we had all of this surplus machinery, taxes, and bulldozers, I tried to buy some because in my area down there the eradication of brush is one of the best taxes that we can have down there for the production of beef. Because if you make 3 blades of grass grow where 1 formerly grew, the Bible says you are blessed, or something to that effect. That is what we have to do in our rising costs of production, taxes, and so forth, and we have to do that. We have to utilize what there is and to place it in a position where it will show a profit on our investment. But when stabilization is achieved, I think the farmer can go back to a competitive basis.

Senator EASTLAND. I am not talking about the farmer individually. The farmer cannot compete with what the Mexican or the Guatemalan Government does. His own Government owes him an obligation.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. That is true, but I think that you owe it more to these young fellows coming up on the family-type farm than to an old fellow like myself, who has but a very few more years of usefulness left in him.

The CHAIRMAN. You must not think that way. You will live to be 90.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. I did not finish one statement that I would like to make. I started to make a statement about the machinery that this country produced to win the war. In order to make the country more prosperous, the manufacturers of these machineries, such as threshers and bulldozers, jeeps, whatever we had, the Government of the United States had that stock dumped overboard in the Pacific Ocean, as badly as we needed scrap and steel in this country, and I think that is one of the solutions one way, I do not say it is the solution, but it is one way that we could get rid of some of the farm surpluses to help the farmer, if it becomes necessary to adopt drastic measures. I do not offer that as a solution, but I say it could be used. If it could be used to help the manufacturers of machinery to stabilize their business after the cessation of hostilities, then it could certainly be used to relieve the farmers of some of the surpluses that beset him and his ills. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. BROOKSHIRE. Thank you, gentlemen.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gilbreath?

STATEMENT OF VANCE H. GILBREATH, MATADOR, TEX.

Mr. GILBREATH. Mr. Chairman and Senator Ellender, I am Vance Gilbreath, of Motley County, where I have been operating a small ranch for the last 25 years. I have a small farm of about 1,800 acres which I live on. The only reason I am doing something else is that I have to supplement it.

I want to project just a little bit different angle, if I may do so in this. That is, on the political angle.

The CHAIRMAN. On what?

Mr. GILBREATH. Politics; yes, sir. I do not think that politics should, of course, be entered into in a crisis that so many people's lives and livelihood depend upon, but it is, and I am going to try to bring this point forward just a little bit.