Mr. ANDERSEN. We are glad to have you on this subcommittee and if you have any questions, we would certainly be glad to have you ask them at this time.

Mr. MARSHALL. I appreciate the kind remarks you have made, Mr. Chairman.

CHANGES IN DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE

Mr. Secretary, I know that you have had quite a time with all of the operations of the Department. This committee, I think, has expressed themselves pretty generally as being sympathetic to your problems and in the future may not be any less difficult. I think that we are in this committee in somewhat of a difficult position from the standpoint that budget items will be coming to us, that as they are cleared, I understand it, by the Bureau of the Budget, that will mean, as I understand it, that I will be observing these requests somewhat on the piecemeal basis. I won't have had the opportunity of looking over them carefully. We admire your zeal down in the Department thinking in terms of economizing. I am sure any member of an Appropriations Committee is in favor of that, but as these departments come up, I think there may be some question in the minds of some of us as to just what your policy might be as far as services are concerned, and I would like to know if you contemplate sending up any proposals, with the thought of doing away with services or dropping services that have been rendered?

Mr. BENSON. In existing agencies in the Department? Certainly any study we have made, and we have made quite a study-we are not through, of course-it is a big problem, as you can appreciate. We have reviewed all of the proposed budgets of the various agencies, as I mentioned earlier, but we haven't in mind the elimination of agencies. Of course, we will always scrutinize very carefully the service performed by any agency in the Department, and if it is not performing an essential service to the farmers, we will recommend its abandonment, of course, but we haven't reached any conclusion that we should make any such recommendation at the present time.

Mr. MARSHALL. You would be thinking, if a service in your estimation was no longer needed and the Department people were coming up, you would indicate to the committee at the time they came up that you were aware of a change, would you? Would that be your policy?

Mr. BENSON. Yes, of course, surely. We won't have any secrets from this committee. You are interested in the Department. Your interest is the same as ours.

Mr. MARSHALL. I wasn't particularly meaning to indicate that there would be any secrecy on your part but there would be something that as an administrative problem that would be somewhat difficult at times to determine with the results that you are forced to come up before us on the budget. But my feeling is that it would be desirable on the part of all of us if any of those services are being dropped that we might be informed of those prior to dropping them.

BUDGET REVIEW

Mr. ANDERSEN. I believe, Mr. Secretary, that you have agreed to advise this subcommittee as soon as possible as to any possible recommendation you might have for changing the amounts contained in this budget now before us.

Mr. BENSON. Yes, if you would like that, you can tell them what we have done, Ralph.

Mr. ROBERTS. This is the situation, Mr. Chairman. You are beginning hearings tomorrow on the budget that is already before this committee. Under the directive from the Director of the Budget, we are reexamining the programs and activities of the Department, including the budget that is now before you. The Department's recommendations must be in the hands of the Bureau of the Budget by the 2d of March. However, under that directive, we are not permitted to make those recommendations public until the Budget Director has made his review and the President has acted formally on them.

Mr. HOREN. That is the regular procedure?

Mr. ROBERTS. It is the regular procedure. What I was leading up to is this: It looks to me like we are in the position of beginning the hearings on the estimates you have before you. As soon as the Budget Bureau has advised the Department of the action which the President has taken on our recommendations, then the Department will sit down with this committee and advise you of the final recommendations of the President on this budget. On the timing, as the Secretary indicated in his opening statement today, we are unable to say definitely when that will be, but it looks to me like it will not be before the middle of March.

Mr. ANDERSEN. That is going to make it a little bit difficult for this subcommittee to hold the kind of hearings that we should have. and I presume, Mr. Secretary, you will do everything you can to expedite that?

Mr. BENSON. We were sorry when we learned it was going to take so much time. We are anxious to expedite it and we will do everything we can, Mr. Chairman, to get it up here as soon as possible.

Mr. ROBERTS. Even after the Secretary sends his recommendations to the Bureau of the Budget, we are not certain that those recommendations are going to be approved and become the recommendations of the President.

Mr. BENSON. May I just add, I understand, Ralph, that we have everything ready now to go to the Bureau of the Budget?

Mr. ROBERTS. We haven't all of the details developed yet, no; but they will be by Monday.

Mr. BENSON. The committee has finished its work?

Mr. ROBERTS. Our committee has finished its review.

Mr. ANDERSEN. It was my hope that we could get direct information at least from you, Mr. Secretary, especially as to any suggested recommendation for change which you might have in mind prior to our actually going into the hearing on that particular subject. But of course, if it cannot be done, we will have to make the best of it.

Mr. BENSON. I will be happy to do anything I have the authority to do to keep you informed.

Mr. MARSHALL. As far as I personally am concerned, realizing that there is some difficulty, of course, in working these things out, I have so much confidence in the chairman of our committee that those things you feel should not be officially released to the public if the chairman were made aware of that, that would satisfy me, make me feel at least more confident that when I was sitting here and agreeing upon appropriating money that I might not find out 6 weeks after that a carpet might be pulled out from under me or service had been dropped which I thought in all good faith was being continued.

Mr. BENSON. We have no intention of deliberatley holding back anything.

DISCUSSION OF ST. PAUL SPEECH

Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. Secretary, I have read two of your speeches, the one in Des Moines and the one at St. Paul. Frankly, I will have to admit that I was forced to read the speeches as a matter of selfpreservation because it did attract from my district a considerable amount of mail. Especially the speech in St. Paul.

Mr. BENSON. I hope I haven't imposed an added burden on you. Mr. MARSHALL. Right now my staff feels that you have because we have been getting quite a volume of letters.

Mr. BENSON. We have also.

Mr. MARSHALL. I would like to congratulate you on your Des Moines speech. I felt that your Des Moines speech was far better, frankly, than your St. Paul speech. I think some of the vagueness, perhaps philosophy in the way that things were mentioned in your St. Paul speech, caused terrific concern. I can judge that by my mail from my district. They have a feeling that in spite of the fact that you said you were going to support the support prices, that were now on our statute books, that were mandatory that we are going back entirely to a free market. I note in reading articles about you there have been some complimentary things said about you

Mr. BENSON. I hope they have been merited.

SUGAR BEET INDUSTRY

Mr. MARSHALL. It has been mentioned that you come from an area where you have a huge sugar-beet industry, I believe the second largest in the United States; is that correct?

Mr. BENSON. I come from a sugar-beet area, Idaho, my native State. It is a rather important sugar-producing State and so are Utah and Colorado and adjacent States; I guess that area with California would probably constitute the sugar-beet-producing area. Michigan and Washington-they have a big factory there and up in Montana also. The whole Northwest area of Mountain States produce a lot of sugar beets, not only those States, however; Michigan and Ohio and other States produce sugar beets.

Mr. MARSHALL. Do you, in your experience in dealing with the sugar industry, knowing that it is highly regulated subsidized industry, feel it has affected the individual freedoms of the people that grow sugar beets?

Mr. BENSON. I have looked with favor on the sugar program as I have understood it. Generally speaking, I think it is pretty much self-supporting and pretty much made by the industry itself in coop

eration with the Congress. At least I remember that the growers played a very important part in formulating the program. I believe it is working pretty well, Mr. Marshall.

Mr. MARSHALL. You don't consider it is a rigid quota system and its strict planning has hindered in any way the people?

Mr. BENSON. The sugar-beet grower has had a lot of freedom under the program; the allotments that have been made really have not resulted in any restrictions of acreage. Of course, we have never produced all the sugar that we consume here. We have been an importing country as you know through the years so the problem is very different than it is on the production of crops that are in export. But the people who are producing sugar beets in areas where I am acquainted have never had any real restrictions on acreage. They could plant as many acres as they wanted to, any crop they wanted to plant. Of course it has been a protection to the domestic growers no doubt to eliminate the imports from abroad and from the standpoint of the domestic grower that is the big benefit to them, the limitation on imports from offshore producers, producing areas.

COMPARISON OF IMPORT AND EXPORT CROPS

Mr. MARSHALL. The reason I asked the question, I think the assurance that you have given me has helped my understanding a bit because certainly if you switched the subject from an import crop to export crop there would be no fundamental difference in the conception toward planning, would there?

Mr. BENSON. If I understand your question, Mr. Marshall, in an export crop without some control of acreage you might build up surpluses to the point where they would have a very depressing effect on the market unless they were supported, and the differences made up through funds from the Treasury. On an import crop you don't have that same problem. The individual grower has no acreage control and with a high rigid support you might be forced to acreage control. That certainly would impose an additional restriction on the farmer if he had acreage control or marketing allotments either one, whereas in the sugar program there is nothing of that sort involved. The farmer plants all the acreage he wishes.

Mr. MARSHALL. Congressman Hope yesterday placed in the record a speech he delivered before the National Association of Wheat Growers at Omaha, Nebr., which I think from my understanding of the matter had about one of the most complete pictures of our wheat situation of anything I have read recently at least. I found myself pretty much in agreement at least, that is why I thought it was an excellent statement.

Mr. BENSON. That is a natural tendency, isn't it? I am guilty of the same thing.

Mr. MARSHALL. That is one thing I think contributes to the wheat problem as far as you and the Department is concerned. Over the years a considerable amount of our foreign market has been built up in an artificial way with expenditures over which this committee has no control. It appears to me that the people of the country are saying we want to cut down on foreign expenditures and the Agriculture Department has a problem with the surpluses which accumulate and I was glad to hear you make the statement a while ago that

they are not burdensome. What plan has the Department thought in terms of moving agricultural commodities into world trade?

Mr. BENSON. We discussed here today, Mr. Congressman, the need for another look at the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations which at one time was looked upon as an agency to help develop and promote foreign markets for our products produced in surplus here, and of course we hope that we can do something along that line. We have a committee on cotton which has worked on this question of exports and already they have made one very definite recommendation to us involving the insurance of cotton, for example, that is exported and held in foreign ports. They think that in itself is going to help stimulate export trade.

EFFECT OF CCC PURCHASES ON COMMODITY MARKET

Mr. MARSHALL. If you will permit me to conclude. I had some comment from my State and a comparable piece was clipped from the Washington Times-Herald Monday, February 9, touching upon that matter of replacement of the orderly market of commodity credit stocks. This article said wheat plunge ranges to 8 cents. The closing paragraph is the one that has caused some comment. Yesterday's downtrend in prices was largely due to a continuation of price-selling movement said to be inspired by the failure of the Secretary of Agriculture, Benson, to announce any immediate Government plan to bolster declining commodity values. This was quoted on February 9. Does this plan you are putting into effect, Mr. Secretary, in the disposal of commodities on the market that you have recently announced, does that correct this situation?

Mr. BENSON. It would certainly tend to help to strengthen markets. That is the real purpose of it. Any movement we can make of any of these commodities in surplus will tend to have a desirable effect on the market. That would be the aim in trying to move some of this butter and cotton into export. That was our objective in trying to work out a plan so the Government could increase its purchases of beef. We might move some of it through this promotion program to get retailers and distributors to push the advertising, push the consumption of beef. We would like to get these commodities in stomachs not in storage, Mr. MARSHALL. I think there are a lot of people who would agree with that.

CORN-ROTATION POLICY

There is a question that comes up about this corn that we were talking about that was accumulated in 1948. Do you have any specific figures as to the percentage of that that now ought to be replaced? You aren't feeling that all of it ought to be replaced by any means?

Mr. BENSON. We have the figures. I do not have them with me. I don't suppose all of it would need to be replaced immediately. We do have a figure and I believe it is in this statement that several million bushels will need replacing very shortly if we are going to prevent it going out of condition. Mr. Davis can give more of the details as President of the CCC.

Mr. DAVIS. There are about 21 million bushels last October, the last inventory we had, grade No. 5 or sample. Now, not all of that is in a condition that it has to be moved immediately but as spring