price on what he does grow on his allotment, he should be willing to take out those acres without any pay, it seems to me.

The CHAIRMAN. You are suggesting that the support price be not less than 90 percent?

Mr. RUSSELL. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. What about the grades of the commodity that is grown, say of cotton and wheat? Would you suggest that you as a farmer be encouraged to grow grain and cotton and other commodities of a quality that is readily salable to the trade?

Mr. RUSSELL. I think that is exactly right. I think that is the only way you can hope to get improvement in your product, pay for the premium product.

The CHAIRMAN. Get the best kind grown and pay enough to have an adequate supply.

Senator YOUNG. How do the farmers divide soil conservation payments as between renter and landlord in the average case?

Mr. RUSSELL. I think in recent years whoever does the work gets the rental payment. If the renter furnishes the sweet clover seed he gets the payment for it and if the landlord furnishes the seed he gets the payment. The payment any more isn't too attractive. It is only probably 50 percent of the actual cost to where it is not like it used to be. It used to be a pretty good little amount there, but I don't believe in our county there has been any difficulty over that part recently. I think in most cases they are willing for whoever buys the seed to get help from the payment for the seed or building terraces or ponds or whatever they might do.

Senator YOUNG. I image there would be some opportunity or chance that an absentee landowner might take his land out of production and thus decrease the unit of the average farmer along the lines you were concerned about a while ago. I think that would take place in some

areas.

Mr. RUSSELL. I think that is right. I believe in the program they will discover bugs they haven't thought of when they start to administer it, but that has been the history of the programs we have had. When you try to administer it you run into things you never thought of before. I think it was suggested you have to have a productivity index set on each farm in order to arrive at the amount of payments that would be fair for that and right there is where you get into a lot of complications to arrive at their productivity index.

I don't know just how you would go about it without causing at least some confusion and hard feelings in the deal.

The CHAIRMAN. Any other questions?

Thank you very much.

Mr. GENTRY. Give your name in full, please, and your occupation.

STATEMENT OF BRYAN GENTRY, HOBART, OKLA.

Mr. GENTRY. I am a cotton farmer. My name is Bryan Gentry. I think the problem has been well stated. The American agriculture is just geared too high in production for our use and being able to dispose at a profit of the products we can grow. It seems to me that the solution is to hold within bounds that production to that point that we can use and sell it and reduce the surplus we now have on hand.

The CHAIRMAN. That is what we are striving for. Can you give us a way to do that? Are you agreed on what was said by Mr. Davis and others to take acres out of production?

Mr. GENTRY. I agree up to a point with Mr. Davis. That would be my solution, that acreage be removed from the farm machinery that we are operating, but I differ from him in this respect. I think that

it should be done not on a voluntary basis but after a referendum of farmers has indicated they want to do that, that each farm unit be required to take out the same percentage of their crops. I wouldn't make payments on those acres.

I think too long we have tried to consider separate crops, wheat as a separate crop and corn and oats and barley, they are all interchangeable to some degree. We are working at cross purposes. The people in my area are growing grain sorghums in competition with the fellow in Iowa growing corn and at the same time he is growing soybeans which are in direct competition with our cottonseed. I think we have to consider all those crops as a whole.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you suggest that the diverted acres be kept out of cultivation?

Mr. GENTRY. I would say they could not be used for any purpose other than for soil building, not even pasture.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had quite a few witnesses testify that way. Anything else you want to add?

Are there any questions?

We thank you very much, sir.

Mr. Nelson? Give your name and occupation.

STATEMENT OF EARL W. NELSON, LAHOMA, OKLA.

Mr. NELSON. Earl Nelson from Lahoma, Okla. I have a short prepared statement.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Mr. NELSON. Honorable Senators of the Agriculture Committee: Regardless of what you have heard in these committee hearings you are going to have to use your own good judgment for a workable farm program.

In my opinion the only permanent solution will come from new uses of farm products by aid of research and freer system of trade by elimination of trade barriers.

We need a good salesman in every country of the world to put his trading clothes on and sell everything that we have a surplus of, and buy everything we can use in our country.

We need to eliminate curbs like the Cargo Preference Act.

I raise wheat and beef cattle and am vitally concerned with these products. I believe that if we would feed all wheat not suitable for human consumption to livestock, we would have a lot less in storage, and if we exported only good milling wheat that we could greatly expand our foreign markets. The dairy farmers have done a good job of selling their products, through their recent advertising campaign, and I believe the beef producers could do the same and raise the per capita consumption and make a good market for an expanding enterprise.

Furthermore, our people will use the production of meat and dairy products from more acres if used in a livestock program rather than grain manufactured for human consumption.

I would like to try bushel allotment for wheat with the two-price system.

I'd like a freer foreign trade.

I'd like more research for new farm products.

I don't want tractor fuel taxed to build highways.
I don't want supports of controls on beef cattle.

I favor repeal of the fair-trade law.

I would rather work cheap the rest of my life than to have prosperity by war. The cheapest thing we now have in our country is food and the most valuable is our youth.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir. We have had much evidence along the same line as your statement. We thank you very much. Senator YOUNG. Yours was a good statement.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dunaway. Give your name and occupation, please.

STATEMENT OF FRANK C. DUNAWAY, PRESIDENT, OKLAHOMA ASSOCIATION OF SOIL CONSERVATION DISTRICTS, JONES, OKLA.

Mr. DUNAWAY. Frank C. Dunaway, farmer, central Oklahoma, president of Oklahoma Association of Soil Conservation Districts. The CHAIRMAN. Proceed. I notice you have a long statement there.

Mr. DUNAWAY. These pages are not all full.

The CHAIRMAN. I know, but have you anything new in that you haven't heard here today?

Mr. DUNAWAY. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Let's have it and let's limit it to that, please, and put your whole statement in the record. If you will do that we will appreciate it.

Mr. DUNAWAY. I will try the best I can. It is sort of integrated

here.

The Production and Marketing Administration crop allotments, made on a historical basis, are all wrong for family-sized farms. No farm with 80 acres, or less, of tillable land should be hampered by crop allotments. Take the hobbles off this type farmer if you expect him to survive. He contributes little to farm surpluses.

Historical allotments on larger farms are of questionable value at least. We suggest study of the following procedure:

When the Secretary has determined the amount of crop production needed to be produced, subtract from that amount the production expected from family-sized farms. He can then determine what percentage of all other land should be devoted to crops production to get desired results. That factor applied to the crop acreage of any larger farm would determine the land to be planted to basic commodities in any year. All land not allotted should be devoted to soilbuilding crops and practices, else no price support, or PMA assistance, for the year. Without crop allotments, the family-sized farmer will, on an average, balance his crop to conform with his labor supply, machinery available, potential market outlet, and family needs.

64440-56-pt. 5- -19

Allotments on historical basis are unfair to soil conservation farmers, because they fail to take into account the land-use adjustments and revegetation already accomplished by conservation farmers. Allotments on a percentage basis can take into account such adjustments.

In regard to farm allotments we cannot find a painless answer. If we expect to bring production in line with available market demand, we see no way to accomplish that purpose except through more effective and realistic production controls plus increased exports.

The farmers of America have voted overwhelmingly to give the Secretary of Agriculture full authority to do this, yet the value of past efforts has been negated by subsequent administration rulings by the Secretary. E. G. A. crop rotation farmer with a 40-acre wheat base was cut to 25-acre planting base. He put on some fertilizer and still raised the usual number of bushels.

Payments for conservation practices on enterprises larger than family-sized farms should most certainly be limited to payment for permanent practices. Payment for recurring practices on familysized farms may have a very definitely value, provided the practice is part of a coordinated soil conservation plan. Incentive payments, that pay an operator for sowing his own seed, are a travesty on justice, and would appear to be a subsidy payment on good farm on which the operator is already thoroughly sold. Farm subsidies, as a substitute for a fair price in the market place, are uneconomical, socially unsound, and call down unfair criticism on farmers.

Farmer A had a 40-acre wheat base. His allotment was cut to 25 acres. His neighbor across the road who had never raised wheat was then informed that "any farm could raise 15 acres." His corn acreage was cut from 60 acres to 45 acres. So he planted 15 acres of wheat on the land taken out of corn.

The first farmer then planted his other 15 acres to grain sorghum. Try to figure out what reduction was accomplished, please. It was all planted back to basic commodities.

The CHAIRMAN. You would suggest we keep diverted acres out of production?

Mr. DUNAWAY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had that suggested before. Is there any other remedy you would suggest?

Mr. DUNAWAY. I think land taken out of production of basic commodities should be put to soil building and soil conserving crops.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had that suggested this morning.

Mr. DUNAWAY. Conservation practices applied to that land in order that the land itself might come up in fertility and add to its value while the farm is undergoing process of adjustment.

Senator THYE. What would be proper soil-conserving practices in this area of the United States.

Mr. DUNAWAY. It will vary a lot even in Oklahoma.
Senator THYE. Just state a few.

Mr. DUNAWAY. Lespedeza, sweetclover. There are 2 or 3 kinds of sweetclover. We can even use sudan if you plow it under. Senator THYE. You plow under all these crops? Mr. DUNAWAY. Possibly harvest seed from the clover. Senator THYE. You are not diverting when you do that. only complicating it.

You are

Mr. DUNAWAY. Cloverseed is in short supply.

Senator THYE. I know, but you are trying to divert from your surplus now and if you go on and harvest a seed crop somebody else will also be growing the seed crop and therefore you haven't eliminated the basic problem.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Mr. DUNAWAY. When the production is reduced and the price structure pulled from under him at the same time, he sees disaster ahead. That is what we are encountering now. In our opinion allotments should be in bushels or bales per farm and excess production be allowed to be carried over to next year and be sold as part of the following year's allotments.

The CHAIRMAN. At whose expense would that excess be carried? Mr. DUNAWAY. At his own expense. That is his problem to carry

over.

Parity under the present law is that price for farm products that reflects the average price received from farm crops the last 10 years. If we use a sliding scale for crop support prices maintained at 75 percent off of parity for 10 years, then parity itself starts a downward trend, and 75 percent soon becomes parity of 100 percent. This cannot be justified. Let's revise this. There is a lot of information on a farmer's economic condition that needs correcting. I take nearly all the farm journals and read the news releases but they don't correspond with what the Bureau of Agricultural Economics tells me in their book and farm statistics.

According to them in 1953 we farmers achieved a total income of $34 billion plus but total cash expenses were $22 billion, which left him a net expendable of $12 billion. Last year it was 13 percent down, or $4.42 billion, leaving 7.58 net expendable. It is assumed by the Under Secretary of Agriculture total price drop this year will be 10 percent or $2.95 billion off that which will leave net expendable in 1955 of $4.63 billion, which is getting to a dangerously low figure.

Yet last year, or last week, rather, there was a news release from Washington stating our income this year was $10.8 billion, but in that $10.8 billion we get Bureau of Agriculture statistics figure shows the rent on the farmer's house, garden, produce, and intangible things, that doesn't enter into net expendable.

Exports and imports during 1952, 1953, and early 1954, the pork producers of America did a remarkable job of adjusting supply to demand and prices held near parity. Pork was not in short supply, yet we permitted importation of enough pork from Europe to break prices here back to 77 percent of parity, in order that Europe might get dollar exchange to purchase the product of union labor.

The CHAIRMAN. We have that by the bushels before us. Give us the remedy, please. You are stating the problem here. Just give us the remedy.

Mr. DUNAWAY. One principal remedy is to adjust production to available demand.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the thing to do, but how would you do it? Mr. DUNAWAY. I would do it by lowering production to meet that demand and then try to get rid of some of the stuff we have stored. The CHAIRMAN. I thought you wouldn't curtail production on 89 acres or a small farmer. How would you do that?