Mr. MANWARING. Yes, sir. We have the same misgivings that Mr. Breeding had, that Mr. Hill has, and that the others who have presented bills have, about applying a provision to a farmer after he has planted. The only saving part of it is that he can adjust himself into compliance, if he wants to. Our problem, then, is whether we are helping more by postponing the operation of this law than we are hurting and we doubt if we are in passing such legislation. But we don't know, and if the Congressmen, themselves, all of them, felt as though we were doing more good than we were doing harm, we would have no objections to it. But we feel quite strongly, based on the figures I have given you and the effect of the postponement of this for 1 year and the movement of that acreage again out of the established commercial wheat area into the fringe areas where there are large numbers of these 15-acre farms, we think it is bad and it ought to be looked at very carefully. Mr. JONES. In other words, I take it your position, or the position of the Department at this time is that you do not favor the passage of this legislation. Mr. MANWARING. We would not favor it if it can be ascertained that by that passage more farmers will be hurt than will be helped. That is equivocating a little bit, Congressman, and Mr. JONES. Mr. Smith has a question. Mr. SMITH. As a matter of fact, all you have to do is to administer 5 million-55 million acres of wheat, isn't that right? Mr. MANWARING. Yes, sir; within provisions of the law. Mr. SMITH. Within provisions of the law and when those acres shift, the Department can't do anything about it. Under the law, that is, if Kansas loses 100,000 and somebody picks them up we still only have those 55 million acres to administer. Mr. MANWARING. That's right. Mr. SMITH. So in reality, you are saying we have to administer the wheat acreage of 55 million acres and we cannot tell you where it is going to go. All we can do is make the recommendation and point out that it is shifting. Mr. MANWARING. That is right. I was going to say, Congressman, that we can, in a sense, prognosticate where it is going to go. We can tell that if you have about the same pattern of compliance that this wheat acreage is going to move, some more of it is going to move out of that Great Plains wheat area into the fringe areas. It moves there both at the State level, the county level, and at the farm level. Now, a farmer who has a 6-acre allotment in the fringe area and plants 15 acres of wheat, does not care if he has a 6-acre allotment or 9- or 10-acre, anything under 15. He is perfectly well satisfied. But the mere fact that he gets a 10-acre allotment when he had a 6 before means that somebody else has to lose it. That has been the process. Now, last year, we looked at that and saw that it was continuing. We are very much concerned about its continuing again for the 1959 allotment. I mean that continual shift on out of that commercial area, and we feel as though something should be done to stop this noncompliance and prevent that shift. By the way, a part of that shift comes about, under the old law by noncompliance right within this same commercial area. If a majority of farmers in a county were in noncompliance by planting between the allotment and the base, they obtained as their history the planted acreage. In other words, if he had a 100-acre base, and a 70acre allotment and he planted 80 acres, then his history would be 80 acres. If there were a lot of those in a county, you can see that they would drop from a 100-acre base to an 80-acre base and they would lose in that county the history to somebody else who would pick it up. That has been occurring in some parts of that some commercial area because of the noncompliance of some individual farmer. So it isn't all falling outside of the area. It is within, too, by the action of the law as it was before. Mr. SMITH. There isn't a county in the commercial wheat area but you can say remains static or stable for the past 10 years. In every year there is a difference in the wheat acreage in the base. Mr. MANWARING. There are some counties in that area, Congressman, that have not remained static. There are quite a number where a large percentage of the farmers have overplanted enough so that they had a diversion of the acreage or a loss of acreage in that county that went somewhere else. There are some of those, due to noncompliance by quite a number of the farmers in the county. Mr. SMITH. I think if the record were available, you would find that those counties that have that shift are based upon moisture. In other words, the prospective crop. I know it is true in my district. Mr. JONES. Mr. Manwaring, is there any, does the Department take the position that it would be desirable to try to have legislation that would attempt to keep these allotments static within the area where wheat is planted or would it be practical on account of the moisture: variance, as Mr. Smith says Mr. MANWARING.. We think, Congressman, that this shift that is being made is undesirable and that at least it ought to be stopped if not reversed a little bit. Over a period of years, this area has lost acreage to the other area. It is true that we have kept the production of wheat down and it is also true that a reversal of that back into the commercial area would be likely to produce more total wheat than not to do it, because if you get a reversal, you will remove acreage from the 15-acre man who does not care and who will grow 15 acres just the same, back into this commercial area where it will increase the allotments of those commercial. farmers a little more. But we feel strongly that it is manifestly unfair to continually deplete the allotment in this old established commercial area where they depend on wheat almost completely for their livelihood. Mr. ALBERT. The truth of the matter is that in that area there are very few other crops possible? Wheat is it. And the truth of the matter is in the areas into which this shift is going, wheat is taking the place of reductions in other crops such as cotton, and corn, and that sort of thing and is interfering with the overall program. Is that not true? I know in certain parts of western Oklahoma there may be certain feed grains you can grow but if you can't grow them, wheat is all. That is true in parts of your district, I am sure, Mr. Smith. Mr. JONES. Well now, do I understand that the Department is not making any recommendation or has not made any recommendation for trying to correct the situation which you say is not desirable? Mr. MANWARING. No, sir; we have not, except to indicate that we are favorable to the law as it now stands. We requested it; we supported it at the time it was passed and we still support it. Mr. JONES. It would have been better if we had had the law, the date of effectiveness of that law changed, to have had a greater notice to these farmers. Mr. MANWARING. There isn't any question about it. It would have been better had it passed and been signed in June than in August because undoubtedly there were some farmers who planted ahead of the signing of that bill. Mr. ALBERT. I think we did shove up the date once, the dates in the original bills were even before the time of passage and we did shove it up until the effective date of the bill, if I recall correctly, and thought we were taking care of the situation. Mr. MANWARING. We did attempt to get that information out to farmers so they would rely on it. We did not send a notice to every individual farmer but we did tell our State people to publicize it and did give them a press release as a basis for publicizing it. Mr. JONES. I think that is comparable to a situation that we had in the committee this last week with the county up in Mr. Ford's district in Michigan, about the commercial corn area after they had gone ahead and planted the wheat. Sometimes I think maybe the Congress and the Department both overlook some of the possibilities that could take place when we are not, maybe, as careful as we should be in establishing the dates for the effectiveness in order to give the farmer notice because, as in this case here, it appears that the problem has been brought about because of the fact that the wheat was planted before the new law became effective. Mr. ALBERT. Had we said that this will not be effective for another year we would have been encouraging a fight for acreage by wholesale overplanting, no question about that. Mr. MANWARING. Yes, sir. There is a difference between what we are talking about here now and the one you have referred to, Congressman, in that the farmer in that new commercial corn area had no idea whatever that it was going to be a commercial corn area and that he would be required to comply with the corn acreage allotment. He had no knowledge of that whatever whereas the people in this area, these people did know there was a law. They did know that they would have to pay a penalty. They did not know, however, some of them, that in addition to the monetary penalty they would have to pay, they would have a nick taken out of their base and therefore their allotments because of noncompliance. There is one more difference and that is that they still have the opportunity until 30 days or until an established disposal date to get themselves in compliance if they want to by clipping or pasturing, using for hay, any way they want to. They do not have to plow it up and expose the land to blowing. Mr. WATTS. Mr. Manwaring, is there any language that can be put in a bill that would achieve what the people who introduced these bills want to achieve without bringing about the spread? Mr. MANWARING. I think language could be written which would, in effect, freeze the allotments where they are, thus giving the farmer the opportunity to harvest and pay his penalty without having his allotment impaired. Mr. WATTS. That would not cause a spread, a shift of the acreage from, say, the wheat area of Kansas and Colorado, to some other places. Mr. MANWARING. It depends a little bit on how it is written, Congressman. I think we could write it so that that would be accomplished. If we provided that the history would be frozen for 1958 only, then you would continue to have shifts through a 10-year period at the State and county level, because of the overplanting in the history that would be used for establishing future allotments. We have not experimented in writing language that would do it but I think we could write language that would stop it where it is without letting these additional shifts take place. If that were desired Mr. WATTS. In other words, you think you could write language that would give relief to the farmer who overplanted, not knowing about the change in the law, and at the same time not cause any shift away from the historic places that have been growing wheat. Mr. MANWARING. Yes, sir. It would not relieve him of paying the monetary penalty. Mr. WATTS. He expected to pay that, did he not? Mr. MANWARING. I think it is fair to say that if we did have such legislation we would recommend that the penalty rate be increased. Now, again, whether it is fair to do that for the 1958 crop when it was announced the other way, is a question. But we think that any legislation of that kind definitely ought to be accompanied by an increased penalty rate if we are to discourage noncompliance and really have an adjustment program. Mr. WATTS. I agree with you there. I have no interest in it because I do not represent a wheat State, as you know, I am just wondering if there is some way to accomplish what these gentlemen sought to accomplish and at the same time not penalize their sections of the country by shifting acreage away. Mr. MANWARING. I think there is a way it could be done but what it would not do, Congressman, and what the present new legislation does do, is move it back a little bit. Present legislation would have a tendency, so long as you had noncompliance, to start the shift back into the area. Mr. WATTS. This change that you would make, would only stop that process for 1 year. Mr. MANWARING. We could write it so that it would just stop any shift at all, I think. Mr. WATTS. That is all I wanted. It is a matter for you boys to work out. Mr. ALBERT. Have you commented on H. R. 9869, the Thomson bill? Mr. MANWARING. No, sir. Mr. ALBERT. Do you have an opinion on that? Mr. MANWARING. The Thomson bill would do for 1 year what Congressman Watts has been talking about, but again putting that into effect over a period of years, letting it take effect over a period of years, you would still have that shift for some 10 years to a lesser degree each year. Mr. ALBERT. What would be the effect of putting it into effect just for 1 year, something along this line? Mr. MANWARING. Well Mr. ALBERT. Would it do more good than harm or vice versa, or have you come to a conclusion on it? Mr. MANWARING. You are saying, Congressman, put this into effect for 1 year and then let the new legislation take effect thereafter? Mr. ALBERT. Yes. Mr. WATTS. That is what I had in mind. Mr. MANWARING. The effect of that would be to freeze that acreage for this year, Mr. Satterfield and Mr. Dyess, and then the next year if the present legislation went into effect you would still have that acreage that was retained going into the history in the subsequent years. Mr. SATTERFIELD. It would be just the history for 1 year and not the allotment. Mr. ALBERT. Do you think it would have an adverse effect on the overall picture hereafter? Mr. SATTERFIELD. We have not really analyzed it from that point, yet. It is a little hard to visualize just what it would do. Mr. ALBERT. You do not have an opinion, official opinion on this matter? Mr. SATTERFIELD. No, we do not. Mr. MANWARING. Mr. Congressman, I think we would have to look at some figures and see what the effect would be. We had done a little analysis on the effect of that bill if it were passed and became permanent legislation and it was our conclusion that while it would ultimately freeze the acreage where it is, until you had covered that 10year base period you would continue, because of previous credit for overplanting to have acreage shift out of that commercial area. Mr. ALBERT. You would never get it back? Mr. MANWARING. No, you would never get it back if it became permanent legislation. I was telling Congressman Watts that I thought we could write it. However, we have not tried it. We think we could write it, however, so that if were considered to be desirable, that you could have permanent legislation which would stop the shift period. It would keep it where it was. You would never get any shift back into the area but at least you would never get any more shift out. Mr. ALBERT. Normally, you would expect it to come back over a period of years; wouldn't you ultimately expect the commercial wheat belt to remain the commercial wheat belt because it is the natural wheat belt of the country? Mr. MANWARING. Of course it would, other factors being equal. Mr. ALBERT. You don't want to freeze wheat out of the commercial wheat belt. Mr. MANWARING. That is what is concerning us, the fact that it is moving out of that commercial wheat belt into the other area. Some of us in the East, Congressman Watts, have benefited by that; allotments have gone up a little bit. Jim, would you want to tell about these figures you have here? |