is being taken to help strengthen producer prices for corn by reducing the amount of CCC-owned corn available for sale during the period of the corn harvest and heavy corn marketings. Export needs will thus be supplied largely from commercial stocks.

Commodity Credit Corporation offerings of out-of-condition corn and of corn in danger of deterioration will be continued. The volume of such corn available for domestic sale will be greatly reduced because the movement of old crop CCCowned corn out of bin sites has been about finished for this year.

Sales programs for other CCC-owned commodities, both export and domestic, are not affected by this action. CCC will continue to offer corn on the domestic market at not less than 105 percent of the current support price plus reasonable handling charges as required by law.

(2798 USDA 2807-55.)

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Mr. PLOWDEN. Those three factors are the reasons that we are where we are today.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this now. What would be your formula to keep this acreage constant?

Mr. PLOWDEN. I don't know, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. A lot of people talk about shifting of acreage to the west. You are looking at men on this platform that have worked hard to prevent this westward shift.

Mr. PLOWDEN. I realize it. I served in the general assembly, and I know it is bad to criticize when you have nothing better to offer.

The CHAIRMAN. It is not a question of criticizing, but getting a method. You know what we lacked? Votes.

Mr. PLOWDEN. I understand that.

Senator JOHNSTON. Just a few votes.

Mr. PLOWDEN. For instance, 90 percent on 200 acres, if you are able to produce 200 acres of cotton you can have a better chance of surviving at 90 percent on the 200 than 90 percent on a hundred acres, say, if you are cut because you can reduce your cost of production as you produce more units. You have to have the same combine for so much work, same tractor power and same operators that you can reach maximum production and reduce your unit cost. That is where with the program we have been curtailed it has hurt. I operate a large farm of more than 1,000 acres. I have been able to get by, personally. The weather has caused us to take some terrible losses. I have had to subsidize that farm. We have 15 families, many of them born and raised there who we are trying to carry on until we can hit better times or something works out.

Now what is worrying me if you let me change to a country banker position, we have deposits of about a million and a half. There are only two banks in our entire county. The Farmers' Home Administration has done a wonderful work in Clarendon County. I think that they have done a wonderful work in the South generally. They have been able to finance people that our banks who are insured under the FDIC cannot touch. We have to stay liquid, we can't tie up money. We have farmers coming right now begging me, I try to stay on the farm and leave it up to the cashier, I hate to face them, many of them begging us to lend them $300 or $600 on a tractor note or they will lose it. They financed it with a tractor company last year or year before. Those people have nowhere to go today. There is nowhere to turn. We can't handle them. Yet we are seeing many of them right now, that is why they need action, that are having to give

up their farming operations, they are caught in the squeeze, they have no secondary or subsidiary income to help them.

Now, I noticed a statement from some of the agricultural officials several months ago that they should go out and get extra work. Well, if there is no industry around and no available work a man is helpless and that is the condition we have in lower South Carolina.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there many of your farmers in that condition? Mr. PLOWDEN. The greater majority or more; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Are they in arrears in payments on their tractors? Mr. PLOWDEN. Yes, sir; a good many of them are.

The CHAIRMAN. How about their cars?

Mr. PLOWDEN. A good many have and a good many will lose the tractor and retain the car in many cases. That is pitiful but it will happen with some. But that need to help them over exists.

Now, we hear rumors, it is not an official rumor and I could not prove it, but I have heard rumors in the last few weeks that our office of the Farmers Home Administration is going to be curtailed in their lending another year to the smaller farmers because they are too small to be a profitable farmer, so to speak. They are expendable and can be cast off. Our estimate is where they have been financing approximately 800 farm families, it is true some of them only have 5 acres and a good many are colored farmers that have their own little units and they are the ones with 8 and 10 children to support, and somebody has to feed them or take care of them.

If they leave the farm, where will they go? Right into the cities to your relief rolls. They are going to pile up. Crime will increase. Some of them argue you will lose something on these farm programs. You may lose 5 or 10 percent, but that is the greatest insurance this country can ever pay to keep down communism and communistic thinking because you have a father and mother with hungry children and they are liable to listen to any kind of preaching on any isms.

You may loan them $500, cover them with a crop mortgage and chattel. They may bring back only $450, you have kept them going and kept the economy as we know it in lower South Carolina moving along. If they are allowed to cut that from 800 families to approximately 200 families it is going to be a major disaster in our country. The program won't affect much of South Carolina or the Nation, but as to those individual families it will be a major disaster for those people.

Now I don't know the answer, but I wanted to ask this committee to try to please look ahead a bit to make the Agriculture Department define to you what is a small family or what is the smallest family unit they intend financing next year because I think that if we look ahead a bit we may save some trouble because word has been passed down, it hasn't been written

The CHAIRMAN. This is only hearsay?

Mr. PLOWDEN. Yes, sir. It is hearsay. But it is pretty accurate. The CHAIRMAN. We will check on it.

Mr. PLOWDEN. It is pretty accurate hearsay because it has been passed down. It hasn't been writing of instructions as to a proper sized farm. I understand they are authorized under the present law to handle any of the smaller, doesn't matter how small. But the tendency is to pull away from that smaller man that he will be expend

able in the changeover to a larger self-supporting unit. I just wanted to bring that out. I have no program other than that except for the farm program. The thought occurred to me several years ago that if we were not going to be the guardian of Mexico and India and several of the other nations with a low-cost production, we could have a program here that every bale of cotton that is spun into cloth at a mill you could levy a subsidy tax there of, say, $25 a bale and then it would be passed on to every consumer in America, that $25 could subsidize or partially subsidize our cotton into the export market and recapture the world market as far as cotton production. Then by extra production of cotton we can keep the ginners and everybody that is related in the cotton industry in the South at full capacity.

It would certainly help a good bit. However, it would absolutely fail if we are going to take care of Pakistan and India and the rest. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

(The following information was obtained from the Department of Agriculture :)

The Farmers' Home Administration has expanded, and expects to continue to expand its lending programs in the next year. During fiscal year 1955 loans totaled $293,189,999, compared with $228,965,705 in fiscal 1953. It is estimated that the total for 1956 will be in excess of $330 million. Under the BankheadJones Farm Tenant Act, which is the principal enabling act of the Farmers' Home Administration loans, it was the intent of Congress that loans made under this legislation be for the purpose of converting farmers from a tenant or sharecropper basis to farm owners or farm operators on economic, family-sized units, where the labor and resources of the family would provide sufficient income to enable the farmer to earn a decent living and be able to repay his debts and provide for his future. The size of this type unit will depend upon many factors and will vary from place to place, depending upon the circumstances.

Loans are authorized under Public Law 38 to be made to farmers who operate units smaller or larger than those provided for under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act in times of production disasters in order to enable these farmers to overcome the disaster encountered and to get back on their feet again. In the State of South Carolina there was a production disaster in 1955 in the nature of a hurricane and 19 counties have been recommended for designation. In areas where the effects of a disaster have not been overcome, it is the policy of the Farmers' Home Administration to extend all or parts of this authority to the States affected.

The Farmers' Home Administration will continue to make the best possible use of the funds and authorities provided by Congress in assisting farm families to become successfully established.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, Mr. Hough.

STATEMENT OF HAROLD W. HOUGH, CAMDEN, S. C.

Mr. HOUGH. I am Harold W. Hough. I am a farmer. Since the war I have been personally operating an 880-acre cattle and grain farm in South Carolina. During the last 6 years I have actually done all the operation myself. I have 400 acres in cultivated or improved crops and I have no allotted crops at all. The cattle situation-4 or 5 years ago I could sell, $5,000 worth of cows, 15 steers for that easy enough. This year I have had to cut down and I sold 118 head of cattle for around $6,200. I had to cull them to get down and also to make debt payments. That shows the drop in the income you get from the number of head. A cow a few years ago would sell for over $200 for old cows. The same cow today won't bring $55 to $75, Hereford cattle. I raised Hereford cattle for 20 years starting on my father's farm, of course.

he CHAIRMAN. You are giving us the trouble. What is the solu

?

[r. HOUGH. The large livestock people out west have kept cattle n getting on a supported basis, I assume.

he CHAIRMAN. They sure have.

[r. HOUGH. I am personally in favor of it. The livestock, milk, cattle in this State or on the raw end of the deal as they have no port. They are selling farms. Anywhere in the paper you see le farms.

'he CHAIRMAN. Are you advocating we should support the cattle? Ir. HOUGH. We should support cattle and others besides the basic

'he CHAIRMAN. Would you suggest that on poultry?

Ir. HOUGH. You can get into so small a scale of farming that 3 hard to say whether to support it or not.

The CHAIRMAN. You see, we have a handful—and you are in that dful-advocating support on livestock which would include poul, chickens, cattle, hogs, but you are in the minority. The question ave to ask you is, How would you control production of this liveck? You realize that a farmer who expects his Government to a floor on any commodity he produces, be it livestock of whatnot, must have some way to curtail production.

Mr. HOUGH. You could give an allocated basis over a number of rs. If he overproduced 1 year he would have to cut the following ar sufficient to meet the quota.

The CHAIRMAN. How would he do it?

Mr. HOUGH. You can sell cows off. You can stop production. You sell poultry and cut down to meet a quota over varied periods. ey are not planning ahead.

The CHAIRMAN. That is easily said, but when you go to do it, it is a ferent matter.

Mr. HOUGH. I am hitting the wrong end of it by the type of farmg I am doing. I have to make certain payments, combine payents, to run my farm. I have to produce a high yield. The lower roes the more I try to produce.

The present program favors the row-crop farmer altogether and not trying to save our soil for the future to any extent. Unless have a program where every farmer will have to diversify a ge percent of acres, even up to 40 percent into a grassland program some soil-conservation program to build up that land. The type farming you see in old countries, we will say England or France, ey have grass on most of the land I have noticed there and it is a ble type of economy it looks like. It has lasted for years.

The CHAIRMAN. They have little farms you could jump across. at is a different economy altogether. I have been all over it. ou have been there?

Mr. HOUGH. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. You know they are all small farms, they can work em with hand tools almost in many places.

Mr. HOUGH. The method that the present Secretary of Agriculare wants to do is eliminate all except the top or productive farms 10 or 20 percent, which would eliminate all the small ones. I will roceed on something here.

We have competition from outside businesses that other known occupation does, sir. Everybody invests money in a farm or piddles with tourists in my county, locally have bought up all the best farms, Du Pont and people with millions. They can farm at a loss and put me out of business. This fellow Williams, in the oil business, has eight or ten thousands acres.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you stop that?

Mr. HOUGH. No way, unless you gave maximum support to a family-type economy.

The CHAIRMAN. That was suggested. We have had some suggestion made that any person who is not a bona fide farmer and who doesn't make his living out of it should get no support whatever. Mr. HOUGH. I agree.

The CHAIRMAN. What would you think?

Mr. HOUGH. I am in favor of it.

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to consider that.

Mr. HOUGH. More equal allocation of basic crops on all farms and if that farmer does not plant the allocated crop that year it should not be taken away from him as long as there is an overproduction of those basic crops.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had that suggestion.

Mr. HOUGH. That farm conservation payments be increased sufficiently to pay the cost of the seed, fertilizer, but not labor which the farmer is capable of putting into it to establish this conservation practice. At present I have to put about 50 percent increase from my funds which I have had to borrow the last 4 years to get the soil conservation payment on the farm. That all farmers are required to place a large percentage of their land into practices that would take them out of cultivation. I think that will cover it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. HOUGH. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Warr, please. Give your name in full, please, and your occupation.

STATEMENT OF 0. L. WARR, TIMMONSVILLE, S. C.

Mr. WARR. O. L. Warr, Timmonsville.

The CHAIRMAN. You are a farmer?

Mr. WARR. I grow cotton and tobacco. I wanted to talk about cotton only. You have put a fair question to us, it seems to me. What will you do about cotton? I have enjoyed these years of 90 percent price supports, but I see that that program has developed stresses and strains and defects that look like are going to be fatal to it. What would I say in place of it? Its worst defect is it is pricing American cotton out of the export market. Its second defect, our own mills have to pay more for cotton than mills anywhere else in the world, and the Secretary is considering selling our cotton to other mills in other countries even cheaper than our own can buy. Those defects I think would be counteracted by the program I am going to be brash enough to suggest since you put it that way.

I would favor the Secretary of Agriculture allotting to each farmer cotton farm in this country what he deems to be its fair share of the domestic consumption for the next year and guaranteeing to that farm parity on that amount.