places, usually February or March, that wheatland would blow out almost as deep as he plowed. So it would not be even proper and should not be allowed to have any farmer plow his wheat up when he had a good cover like they had this fall and leave the ground bare to the wind.

Mr. BREEDING. The deadline, as I understand for plowing up wheat, before harvest is May 31 or along about that time.

So it seems to me like if we are going to be able to do anything to correct this provision, where they have overseeded without knowledge of the law we will have to work pretty fast; otherwise, it would not have time to get through.

Mr. HILL. That is all.

Mr. WATTS. I want to ask a few questions to try and educate myself a little regarding the wheat situation in an effort to more clearly understand what we are dealing with.

I understand that every wheat farmer has an acreage base?

Mr. BREEDING. Yes.

Mr. WATTS. How is that base acreage arrived at?

Mr. BREEDING. Back over the years-I do not know exactly, sirI know back over the years they have establish a base, and the base acreage on the farms that I come from, that I own and operate or my sons operate, is 80 acres per quarter section.

We used to farm wheat on the basis, in my county, of half summer fallow and half wheat. So we had 80 acres of wheat and 80 acres of summer fallow.

This is not true of all of my district, but is of the area where I live.
So I presume the base was set up from prior operations.
Mr. WATTS. Prior history of the farm?

Mr. BREEDING. Yes, sir.

Mr. WATTS. Within the framework of that base you are granted an allotment?

Mr. BREEDING. Yes, sir. I understand that the base years-I believe it carries 4 years for your base, they add them all up, divide it by 4, to get an average. Then they use that figure times a national factor to establish your alloted acreage. So it could be 60 percent of your base.

Mr. WATTS. Here is one question I wanted to ask you. You said something about an amendment that dealt with the 30-acre wheat man. Do I understand that amendment to provide something like this, that those farmers who have a base allotment not in excess of 30 acreas and planted wheat in the fall of 1957-supposing your amendment was adopted-would not be penalized?

Mr. BREEDING. I haven't any intention of adding the 30-acre or the 15-acre farmer to my bill since I have very few of them in my district. Mr. WATTS. I understood that you had many.

Mr. BREEDING. My bill just leaves that as it is.

Mr. ALBERT. This bill would not apply to them?

Mr. BREEDING. My bill does not apply to the 30-acre farmer.

Mr. ALBERT. It does not apply to the 30-acre farm?

Mr. WATTS. In other words, he could hold the planting and have an allotment?

Mr. ALBERT. Under the law if the the 15-acre man did, he gets no credit. at all. The 15-acre man gets no credit above his allotment.

30-acre man planted wheat, or The 30-acre man gets no credit

If we enact this bill without exempting them, automatically we will be throwing a lot of credit back into the 30-acre farms. There is no question about that. That will move wheat out of the Wheat Belt into other States.

Mr. WATTS. I understand that.

Mr. BREEDING. I would like to make a further statement that I would like for all that wish to be heard on this bill to have that opportunity, and personally, the National Association of Wheat Growers are having their annual convention in Spokane, Wash., and I am sure that they will want to testify as soon as possible.

Mr. ALBERT. Yes.

Mr. BELCHER. Mr. Breeding, at the outset when the chairman of the subcommittee and I investigated this, I think both of us were probably of the same opinion that you are. But this thing is a little deeper than it really looks so far as your State and my State are concerned.

We passed this law with the sole purpose of preventing the shifting of wheat acreage from the wheat areas to the nonwheat areas. Mr. BREEDING. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELCHER. All right. If we repeal this law now, while it may help the fellow that overplants, it will hurt everybody that complies, for this reason: If we set this law up 1 year this may help this farmer that you speak of-it will, also, permit all of the farmers in Missouri and Mississippi, and all of these other States to do the same thing and if I am correct, and I think that Mr. Albert and I have about come to this conclusion, in the end, it will take wheat acreage away from Kansas and it will take it away from Oklahoma and Colorado and the wheat sections, and it will put it over in these nonwheat States. That is exactly why we passed this law because in every commodity when we put acreage allotments on the wheat areas or the corn areas or any other area, it serves the purpose of shifting the acreage out into the nonproducing areas. And for that reason, we had all of these in mind. And we attempted to prevent that shift. Because when our farmers were laying out their acres the same amount of acres were taken up in other parts of the country and they produced, and our farmers were paying the penalty of trying to keep down surpluses at the very time that other sections were building up the surplus. And we were not gaining anything at all.

So in an attempt to stop it, this subcommittee made a thorough study and attempted to use this law to prevent that.

Mr. BREEDING. I do not ask for repeal of the law. I don't think we should repeal it. I am asking for relief for 1 year.

Mr. BELCHER. Have you checked the figures to see how many acres will be shifted from Kansas and Oklahoma and so forth, if this is stopped for 1 year?

Mr. BREEDING. No, it has been mentioned here. I haven't checked. I propose no shift of acres.

Mr. BELCHER. That might be a very enlightening figure.

Mr. BREEDING. By excluding this 30-acre farmer you do not think that would correct it?

Mr. BELCHER. Those acres, if they are permitted to count as wheat history, they will come from somewhere. They are going to come from your wheat area and mine. Every time that they build up an

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acre of wheat history it will come out of yours and mine, because your area and my area has got the long-time wheat history and when somebody else builds up and the minimum does not increase, that just means that when you have to take a cutback, you cut back everybody and you build up wheat history for these areas that have not been producing wheat. And while you find that the farmer that you represent will get hurt now, in the end when the whole acreage of Kansas is cut down he may be hurt more than he is helped, and the whole State of Kansas will be hurt, as I understand it.

So while you are attempting to help the fellow you are penalizing all of the compliers in this area.

Mr. BREEDING. It does not seem to me that has been true in the past. I have no intention of penalizing anyone.

Mr. BELCHER. It has been true in the past. That is exactly why we passed this law. It was to keep that from happening which will happen if these acres are permitted to shift. And there has not been a year in the past they have not shifted. You got out in some of these areas, and you will find the wheat acreage has jumped tremendously, 10 or 12 times.

Mr. BREEDING. I do not know that we have lost any wheat acres off of our farm recently.

Mr. BELCHER. What did you say ?

Mr. BREEDING. We haven't lost any wheat acres off of our farms recently, that I know of. And I live in the extreme tier of counties in Kansas, and my allotment of acreage is practically the same.

Mr. BELCHER. That is one thing that should be very carefully gone into because I was of the opinion

Mr. BREEDING. I would like to correct the penalty provisions for one year only.

Mr. BELCHER. Everybody seems to be convinced-and I am most interested in wheat the same as you are

Mr. BREEDING. I most certainly would like to see it helped.

Mr. BELCHER. In the overall picture it will be damaging more than we will help them by trying to help them out of this particular dilemma. We might be hurting them more. That is a matter that we can take care of.

Mr. BREEDING. I, certainly, would not be for shifting these acres as you mentioned. I would be opposed to that.

Mr. BELCHER. As I understand it, your bill does that very thing. It permits, as to this man who wrote you, he is overseeded-he has probably got 60 or 65 percent of his acreage. While he is overseeded a few acres, thousands of acres have been overseeded in other areas. That will be offset against those few of his, don't you see?

Mr. ALBERT. If you will yield, Mr. Breeding has an amendment to his bill, not to permit the 30-acre man to get credit under this bill. That will take care of part of it-no question about that.

Mr. BELCHER. That will take care of that but that will not take care of the fellow that has 500 acres in Missouri who never had any wheat history before. That will take care of the 30-acre man.

Mr. ALBERT. If you will yield further, it seems to me I haven't given this enough study to come to a conclusion-but it seems to me that there is only one issue on this pending legislation and that is, whether we are going to be unfair to somebody who overplanted by

not getting the word to him in sufficient time to enable him to make an adjustment early.

So far as the wheat section of the country is concerned, I have become convinced, subject to be unconvinced, that existing law is good legislation for the wheat section and will save it in the long run.

Mr. BELCHER. I am certainly against changing the rules in the middle of the game.

Mr. ALBERT. That is the only point.

Mr. BELCHER. The fellow that took the chance, we give him the benefit. And the fellow that abided by the law is penalized by it, by the fact that we are taking care of the fellow that did not comply. So we are changing the rules on the fellow that complied just the same as we are changing the rules on the fellow that did not comply.

Mr. BREEDING. I think if you had done that in plenty of time we would not have had so much trouble. But when you wait until after a man finishes the seeding and then tell him he has a double penalty that kind of sticks in his craw.

Mr. ALBERT. Are there any other questions of Mr. Breeding?

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Breeding, isn't it true that out in our wheat section of Kansas we planted earlier this year than ordinarily?

Mr. BREEDING. I think that is true, because we had early moisture,

yes.

Mr. SMITH. And, also, the farmers were looking for some wheat pasture?

Mr. BREEDING. Yes. However, those that were in the soil bank realized they would not have any until the first of the year.

Mr. SMITH. If they had so many acres in the soil bank they would not have planted it to wheat. That is one of the things that I have found out. In order to get some wheat pasture they did it because they had the moisture. Down in the Department they seem to believe that all a wheat farmer has to do is to get a drill and shovel some wheat and start planting.

Mr. BREEDING. That is not true.

Mr. SMITH. You and I both know wheat planting is a very expensive operation.

Mr. BREEDING. That is right.

Mr. SMITH. Is it not true that it costs several dollars an acre to prepare to plant for wheat?

Mr. BREEDING. Yes, sir.

Mr. SMITH. After his land was prepared he planted it. If he had known about this double penalty he would not have overplanted. Mr. BREEDING. That is the way I feel, that he would not have planted if he had known in time.

Mr. SMITH. Of course in my district, most of the wheat was planted on the 26th of September.

Mr. BREEDING. Mine, too.

Mr. SMITH. It is an unfair interpretation, in my opinion, and too late. And the chairman here has indicated that the only issue is whether or not these people should be penalized because of failure to get out the proper notices to them. As to the man who had proper notice, I have no defense of him.

Mr. BREEDING. Neither do I.

Mr. SMITH. But I have a defense for the man who spent his money after 3 years of drought out there and plants wheat and they say, are all wrong," because somebody did not get this word out to them. That is what causes the trouble when the Government starts messing around, and is late in making the decision.

Mr. HILL. Let me ask a question. When did Congress pass the bill? When was it signed?

Mr. BREEDING. In August.

Mr. HILL. What time in August?

Mr. SMITH. The last of August.

Mr. BREEDING. The President signed the bill, as I understand it, on the 28th day of August.

Mr. HILL. Signed it when?

Mr. BREEDING. The 28th day of August.

Mr. HILL. That would be absolutely impossible for the Department to get the notices out in my area-some of those people started in August to plant their wheat and they started in April to get the ground ready for the summer fallow.

Mr. BREEDING. We had people in my district planting wheat before the President signed it.

Mr. BELCHER. Two days later they sent out the information, after the bill was passed.

Mr. HILL. It had to be signed after we passed it.

Mr. KRUEGER. I am not clear on this matter. Has a farmer a quota of wheat acreage whereby he knew how much he could plant and then he deliberately overplanted?

Mr. ALBERT. Yes.

Mr. HILL. Let us give the devil his due-wait a minute. This farmer has overplanted and he knew when he overplanted that he would pay the same penalty, but he would rather overplant it and pay the penalty.

Mr. ALBERT. And the consequences of overplanting would change, in other words, it would be made more severe.

Mr. BREEDING. There is a double penalty for overseeding.

Mr. HILL. He would not have planted.

Mr. KRUEGER. He deliberately overplanted and he was ready to pay the penalty for it. And now as I understand it, he said there is no penalty in force.

Mr. HILL. Not only that, but his future planting.

Mr. BREEDING. We have paid a penalty for years on overseeding wheat about $1.12 a bushel. Now, then, we have a penalty with this provision to take acres away from us as well.

Mr. HILL. There was only one before.

Mr. KRUEGER. You speak of winter wheat. We have spring wheat.. I am not confronted with this particular problem. I now have it clear in my mind.

Mr. BELCHER. I want to make it clear, I am not in favor of chang ing the rules. However, in this particular instance, I think the overplanter in the wheat area is going to have fewer acres than he would have if the law stays in as now. The other States are going to have his acres, and they will take it away from him and your neighbor, too, if we pass your bill. When the overall acres are cut he will be back farther than he would have been if he didn't get that and all of the