not require a reduction in wheat base acreage of a producer, if that producer should plant more acres of wheat than his acreage allotment. In large areas of the winter-wheat region, wheatgrowers have just lived through 5 to 7 years of severe drought. Consequently, when moisture conditions improved in the summer and fall of 1957, many of these growers voted in favor of marketing quotas, with the intention of overplanting the allotment and sealing the normal yield of the excess acres. In doing so, they did not expect to be subjected later to the then-unexpected additional penalties for overplanting.

Public Law 203 was not approved until August 28, 1957, well after the referendum. Many winter-wheat producers had already made plans for their 1958 crop. The Secretary of Agriculture's new regulations did not get translated into the field procedure manual for almost 2 months. Individual growers were not notified of the new rules until early in November. This was the date on letters sent out by county farmer committees in Colorado. By that time all winter-wheat producers had planted their wheat acres for 1958 harvest.

As a result they found themselves in a situation where they were faced by new, stricter regulations that were not in existence or expected when they voted in the referendum and when they planted their crop. It is a clear provision of Anglo-Saxon common law and of the United States Constitution that private property cannot be taken by Government by ex post facto legislation. While the rules regulating a quota program may not be a clear case of private property, the equity of the situation is similar. In our opinion, the law does not require the Secretary to make the regulations retroactive. However, he has seen fit to do so and insists that the only remedy is to pass a new law.

We suggest the committee may wish to incorporate the provisions of this bill along with the bills restoring the 1958 support level to $2, the hold-the-line milk bills, and emergency legislation needed by other commodities into a comprehensive draft for floor consideration and early enactment. If separate comprehensive hold-the-line emergency legislation does not seem feasible, we hope you can include these emergency bills in the long-range comprehensive one-package bill that your committee contemplates.

We know of no serious opposition to enactment of Mr. Breeding's bill. Its enactment would relieve a serious hardship to a great many Farmers Union members in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.

Mr. Chairman, we are assuming that passage of the Breeding bill or similar legislation will not open the wheat program in 1958 to unlimited wheat plantings nor the acquisition of additional base acreage by the 15- to 30-acre growers who plant wheat only for feeding on their own farms.

What we are suggesting is that the legislation be restricted to the minimum change needed in the law to correct the injustice to winter wheat growers in 1958 and that no other changes be made in this connection with Public Law 85-203 at this time. We supported enactment of Public Law 85-203 not knowing that it would not be placed into effect until after some winter wheat farmers had already planted their crops for 1958 harvest. We believe that such growers are the only ones who are unfairly affected by the new law. We believe that

the 1958 injustice should be corrected and the remainder of the law be allowed to stand.

Mr. JONES. As I understand it, the bill that you are endorsing here is the bill, H. R. 10228, which is in addition to-and you are endorsing both the H. R. 9814 by Mr. Breeding and the $2 support bill, both?

Mr. KENFIELD. Yes.

Mr. JONES. Do the members of the committee have any question? Mr. SMITH. You heard Mr. Manwaring's statement, did you not? Mr. KENFIELD. Yes.

Mr. SMITH. Are you in sympathy with what he says that it can probably be done with a bill that could be drawn to limit it just to 1 year?

Mr. KENFIELD. I think so. Our organization stands strongly for controls under the price support program. But we do feel there has been an injustice in this particular case.

Mr. SMITH. We understand that and I am in favor of it. But you would sooner have Mr. Manwaring's idea that it would be applied strictly to this year for these overplantings?

Mr. KENFIELD. Applied to strictly the 1957 plantings that will be harvested in 1958.

Mr. SMITH. For these people who were not properly advised. But you don't want to go ahead and do what the Thomson bill would do, to increase

Mr. KENFIELD. I wouldn't want to say that, sir. We would have to see what is being proposed, exactly what is being proposed.

Mr. SMITH. But your basic objective in coming before this committee is to see that these people who were not properly notified and overplanted are taken care of? Is that your basic reason for being here?

Mr. KENFIELD. Yes, sir.

Mr. SMITH. The other matters can be taken care of with other legislation?

Mr. KENFIELD. Yes; and I would hold in abeyance the judgment in regard to the proposal of Mr. Manwaring, that he made. However, I think there is merit to what he is discussing. I would certainly want to withhold judgment myself.

Mr. SMITH. The basic objective of your organization is to try to preserve and help those who grow wheat on the high plains area

Mr. KENFIELD. Our basic objective is to stand for the welfare and the interest of the family farmers whom we represent. That includes many types of producers, of course, and we have many one-crop producers in our general area.

We feel that certainly the allotment program, overall, if it is going to be adjusted, should be adjusted to the needs of family farmers. These, straight across the board, have been quite unfair but in view of the situation we have been in, our members are strongly for production controls under a separate support program.

I don't know whether I have answered the point of your question or not but I would say that.

Mr. SMITH. Of course, the family farm in Missouri and other places, Eastern States, is no different than the farmer out on the high plains who can only grow a commercial crop of wheat. So you are talking about him.

Mr. KENFIELD. That is true. But we have many families, family farmers, who are heavily in wheat and yet they have other crops and have livestock, and so on.

Mr. SMITH. I have no further questions.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Belcher.

Mr. BELCHER. I don't think I have any questions.

Do you feel that the allotment program has had a tendency to shift these various commodities and especially wheat that we are talking about from the normal wheat areas to the nonwheat areas?

Mr. KENFIELD. I would say that I believe the absence of any firm supports, price supports for other commodities, has done as much as anything to encourage the shifting.

Mr. BELCHER. You realize there has been a shift from historical wheat areas to the nonareas?

us.

Mr. KENFIELD. Apparently there has from the figures presented to

Mr. BELCHER. When we have 55 million minimum, every acre that you put in some nonwheat State you take out of a wheat State, you have to if you stay within the minimum.

Mr. KENFIELD. That is one of the problems, I think, of the acreage allotment program and I do feel that if you had a well-rounded pricesupport program, a comprehensive farm program, where there would be adequate protection for producers of other commodities than wheat, you would have a certain amount of normal adjustment on the part of the farmers themselves. I think there is a tendency for growers to grow wheat in some of these so-called nonwheat areas because there is a measure of protection in wheat that is not found in other commodities. I think a controlled program that is democratically worked out has democratic features in it.

Mr. BELCHER. You control one crop and you control another one and force it out. Then you may be helping one that you are supporting but in a way you are hurting the one that does not get support.

Mr. KENFIELD. I think that is a very good point. This is a relationship among all the commodities, among all the producers that we have not recognized very well, I would say up to this point. Mr. BELCHER. I think you are 100 percent right.

Mr. KENFIELD. We notice that in our organization because we are a general farm organization comprising producers of many varieties of commodities and we certainly sense that feeling among our people.

Mr. BELCHER. That has been my observation in the 7 years I have been on this committee that about every time we help somebody we hurt somebody. If there was just some way that we could always help people without hurting anyone else we would be a great committee, but I don't know what the solution is unless it is, as you say, completely controlled agriculture.

Mr. KENFIELD. Mr. Congressman, there is one thing to think of, though. Every year we have what you might call a total marketing, total agricultural production; and it seemed to me there ought to be some way of sort of prorating that, some fair basis among the farmers, giving recognition to areas of production as well as soil, and other conditions that are concerned.

The struggle with the thing as it is now, maybe it would be a struggle then, but there would be a greater element of fairness in it which

would tend to eliminate this what seems to be apparent competition among producers themselves.

Mr. JONES. Are there any other questions of the witness by the committee?

Mr. Chenoweth is here this morning. I believe you have already testified on your bill, Mr. Chenoweth.

I want to thank you, Mr. Kenfield.

Are there any other persons who would like to appear before the committee this morning?

If not, the committee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock Friday morning when the National Wheat Association will be here to testify. (Whereupon, at 11:30 a. m., the meeting was adjourned.)

WHEAT ACREAGE ALLOTMENTS-PRICE SUPPORT

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1958

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMODITY SUBCOMMITTEE ON WHEAT
OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10: 15 a. m., in room 1308, New House Office Building, Hon. Paul C. Jones, presiding. Present: Representatives Albert, Jones, and Smith.

Also present: Representatives Johnson, Breeding, Watts, and Chenoweth; Francis M. LeMay, staff consultant.

Mr. ALBERT. The committee will please come to order.

This morning we are privileged to have the statement of the National Association of Wheat Growers, and I think Mr. Hughes himself is here to represent the association.

Mr. Hughes, will you come forward?

Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Chairman, we prefer to wait until the Department has presented whatever they have first.

Mr. ALBERT. Yes.

Now, Mr. Manwaring, do you have any further statement at this time?

Mr. MANWARING. Mr. Chairman, at the last session we were requested to come back with some proposals, or some language and we thought that we might explain that a little bit.

Mr. ALBERT. All right, will you come forward?

Mr. MANWARING. I would like to have Mr. Dyess and Mr. Schoonover come with me, too.

Mr. ALBERT. Very well.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF LAURENCE MANWARING, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR PRODUCTION ADJUSTMENT, USDA, ACCOMPANIED BY W. K. SCHOONOVER, GENERAL COUNSEL'S OFFICE, AND JAMES WYESS, COMMODITY STABILIZATION SERVICE, GRAIN DIVISION

Mr. MANWARING. Mr. Chairman, at the last session we were asked if we would explore the possibility of providing wording that would freeze acreage allotments for wheat permanently, where they are or nearly where they are.

We have done that and we have language which will accomplish that. We think there are two problems in connection with it that should be brought out and that you should be cognizant of.

One of them is that the adoption of that language, while it would stop any shift that is now taking place from one area of the country to

22856-58-pt. 1—5

59