Plans for Crop Surplus Control and Farm Mortgage Relief

Report Outline
Legislative Recommendations of the Farm Board
Party Positions on Farm Relief Problem
Legislative Plans for Control of Crop Surpluses
Plans for Relief of Mortgage and Tax Burdens

Legislative Recommendations of the Farm Board

Growing Favor for Allotment Plan of Crop Control

In a special report on legislative recommendations, supplementing its third annual report to Congress, the Federal Farm Board disclosed, December 7,1932, that the $500,000,000 revolving fund with which it started operations in the summer of 1929 had been reduced to a current value of $140,000,000 “when all outstanding loans are appraised on a conservative basis.” As an alternative for the price stabilization provisions of the present law, it proposed that the Agricultural Marketing Act be amended “so as to provide some means of elevating the returns to farmers from the production of exportable farm products, in such a way as (a) to pay the costs, if any, on a continuous and self-sustaining basis, and (b) to provide an effective system for regulating acreage or quantities sold or both.” It held that the following two principles had been demonstrated by experience to be essential for effective relief:

1. Prices cannot be raised unless some one pays the cost. The new plan must be self-sustaining, with a continuous method of covering the costs. Prices of other products are now 40 per cent above the prices at which farm products are selling. If the new method raised prices to domestic consumers to the level of prices of other commodities, that would not be giving farmers an unfair advantage.

2. Prices cannot be kept at fair levels unless production is adjusted to meet market demands. …Any method which provided higher prices and did not include effective regulation of acreage or of quantities sold, or both, would tend to increase the present surpluses and soon break down as a result. To be of lasting help, any plan must provide a system of effective regulation, so that our millions of farmers can plan and adjust their production on a dependable basis, instead of competing blindly with each other.