Government Payments to Farmers

Report Outline
Current legislation affecting farm payments
Agricultural Conservation and Parity Payments
Commodity Loans on Leading Farm Crops
Marketing Agreements and Quotas; Surplus Crop Disposal
Special Focus

Current legislation affecting farm payments

Presidential Veto of Loan Stocls Freezing Bill

Awaiting consideration by the House of Representatives when it ends its current series of three-day recesses on September 15 will be President Roosevelt's veto of the loan stocks freezing bill, a measure which would virtually prevent sales of cotton and wheat by the Commodity Credit Corporation and would release wheat farmers in part from penalties for the use of wheat raised in excess of their marketing allotments. In vetoing the bill, August 25, the President said its enactment would “seriously and adversely affect the agricultural adjustment program and the attendant policies which have been so beneficial to our farmers during the past few years.”

The provision to permit farmers to use wheat produced in excess of farm-acreage allotments for 1941 as feed without penalty “would place a premium on non-compliance with the wheat program” and would constitute “a breach of faith with the large majority of farmers who complied with the program…. Even more objectionable” the President wrote, “is the provision which would direct the Commodity Credit Corporation to acquire title to all cotton and wheat of the 1940 and previous crops in which it has an interest and to hold these commodities for an indefinite period.”

In view of the closeness of the vote by which the conference report on the bill was adopted by the House—176 to 162—it is wholly unlikely that a two-thirds majority can be mustered in the lower body for overriding the veto. The bill has considerably stronger support in the Senate, but the veto must be considered first in the chamber where the bill originated. As originally approved by the House, the bill provided only a minor measure of relief for wheat farmers who had sown more than their allotted acreages but had harvested exceptionally light crops. In the Senate it was amended to allow unlimited feeding of over-quota wheat to livestock—a plan which met strong opposition from corn growers—and to freeze wheat and cotton stocks of the Commodity Credit Corporation. These provisions were accepted by the House August 13 in the conference report.