tionate share of the national production that was domestically consumed, in consideration of his agreement to reduce his acreage in 1934 and 1935 by such percentage, not to exceed 20 percent, as the Secretary of Agriculture should determine.

The large majority of the groups represented at the conference recommended that the Adjustment Administration adopt and put into effect the domestic allotment plan and take immediate steps to make payments to growers who agreed to cooperate. All groups pledged support for whatever plan was adopted.

FEATURES OF THE PLAN CHOSEN

On June 20, 1933, the Secretary of Agriculture announced that production adjustment payments would be made with respect to wheat as a basic agricultural commodity. After further consideration the Secretary announced, with the approval of the President, a plan containing the following main provisions:

(1) Adjustment payments annually on the 1933, 1934, and 1935 wheat crops, to producers entering into contracts with the Secretary of Agriculture to reduce their wheat acreages for 1934 and 1935.

(2) Payments for the 1933-34 marketing year to amount to 28 cents per bushel on that portion of each producer's base production corresponding to the portion of the total national production which is ordinarily consumed domestically. This portion was found to be approximately 54 percent.

(3) The contracting producer to agree to reduce his wheat acreage as required by the Secretary of Agriculture, but by not more than 20 percent of his average acreage for the 3-year base period, and to sow in a workmanlike manner an acreage sufficient to produce, under normal yield, the amount in bushels allotted to him.

(4) A processing tax to be levied upon the first domestic commercial processing of wheat (defined in the Adjustment Act as the milling of wheat) to provide funds for making production adjustment payments and for other purposes.

(5) Acreage and production allotments for States, counties, and individual contracting producers to be determined.

(6) County or district wheat production control associations to be organized. While this plan was being formulated in Washington, events in the world wheat situation served to focus attention upon the United States' wheat program and to increase its importance.

III. WORLD WHEAT AGREEMENT

In the summer of 1933 a World Economic Conference was held in London. All of the great wheat-growing countries of the world were represented. At this conference the world wheat situation was one of the important matters considered.

In May of 1933, preliminary discussions on wheat, looking toward an international agreement, had taken place among important wheatproducing countries at Geneva. Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States were formally represented at this meeting, which was held at the invitation of the economic section of the League of Nations. Following the preliminary discussions at Geneva the wheat conference continued at London concurrently with the World Economic Conference, and the important wheat-importing countries as well as the exporting countries were brought into the discussion.

As a result of these discussions an international agreement was approved and signed by all the important wheat exporting and importing countries, including the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on August 25, 1933. The agreement provided that the exporting countries should take steps to control their production or exports, and included a definite limitation of the quantities exported from the 193334 crop. It also provided that the importing countries should take steps to increase the consumption of wheat and, as rapidly as possible, should reduce the barriers against its importation.

The wheat export quota for Russia was not finally decided in the agreement as signed, but was left to be determined in subsequent negotiations. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed, however, as party to the agreement and indicated its intention of assisting in the general policy of preventing excessive pressure upon international wheat markets. The minimum export quota for 1933 and 1934 for each of the major exporting countries, subject to increase if import demand warrants, was fixed as shown in table 6.

TABLE 6.—Export quotas, world wheat agreement

[In millions of bushels, i.e., 000,000 omitted]

In case 1933-34 exports fall below the assigned quota,the 1934-35 quota will be correspondingly increased.

The basis of agreement for reduction of wheat acreage by the signatory countries regards the crop years 1931-32, 1932-33, and 1933-34 as the base period. This period is 1 year later than the base period adopted for the United States wheat program. Canada and the United States pledged a reduction equal to 15 percent of the acreage of the base period 1930-31, 1931-32, and 1932-33, while Argentina and Australia pledged themselves to reduce exports to an equivalent amount, without increasing stocks in storage.

The wheat-importing countries entered into the agreement on a basis of mitigation of their import restrictions and quotas, based upon the gold price of wheat in London.

Several signatory countries have already taken steps to make their quotas effective. France has passed a statute regulating further increase in wheat acreage and has modified regulations on flour milling. Germany has announced her intention of applying similar control to wheat production. Australia has developed a measure regulating export of wheat, while Argentina and Canada are actively considering means by which they will make effective their adherence to the international agreement. The acreage reduction plan adopted by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration put the United States in position to conform to its commitments under the London agreement, either by acreage reduction already under contract or by ex

tension of the program. The Department of Agriculture has several times stated that it will take such steps as necessary to fulfill the American agreement to reduce acreage by the full 15 percent, and the first of these steps was taken with the launching of the adjustment

program.

IV. EXECUTING THE ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM

In late June and early July 1933 four regional conferences on the wheat program were held at Kansas City, Mo.; Spokane, Wash.; Fargo, N.Ďak.; and Columbus, Ohio. These conferences informed the State agricultural extension staffs on the basic features of the program and they also provided the Adjustment Administration with vital information on special regional problems and necessary adaptations. Nine States, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, were represented at the Kansas City conference; 5 States, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and California were represented at the Spokane meeting; 4, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana, had representatives at the Fargo meeting; and 15, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, were represented at the Columbus conference.

In preparation for the program a broad educational campaign, designed to give every wheat grower in the country an opportunity to learn the details of the plan, was carried out with cooperation of the Extension Service. County agricultural extension agents were already functioning in most counties in the wheat producing regions, and 524 temporary emergency agents were employed for service in counties without regular agents. They were employed from lists of eligibles submitted by the Civil Service Commission, and were engaged on a temporary, 3-month basis.

MANY AGENCIES COOPERATED

Newspapers and farm journals, radio stations, and other agencies cooperated in the program. Circular letters, charts, and other visual aids were utilized to the fullest extent. Community meetings and personal visits by extension agents and volunteer committeemen made contacts with wheat growers.

In typical local educational campaigns, beginning was made by the appointment of temporary county educational campaign committees with 7 to 9 members, usually leading wheat growers. The committees served only until the formal organization of county or district wheat production control associations. Under the leadership of these committees, advising and assisting the extension workers, counties were divided into local units as bases for local meetings and intensive coverage, and to serve as a foundation in later organization of the county or district association. Circulation of information through all available channels followed the organization of the local units, and local meetings for beginning the permanent organization of production control associations were held. When these permanent associations were organized, they took over the local administration of the program and the work of the preliminary campaign committees ended.

In August the Adjustment Administration issued and distributed. 100,000 copies of a 74-page bulletin, the Handbook of Organization

and Instructions for County Agents, Community Committeemen, Officers of County Wheat Production Control Associations, and Farm Leaders, for Applying the Agricultural Adjustment Act to Wheat.

Printed instruction sheets, record forms, certification blanks, and applications and contracts were printed at the Government Printing Office in Washington and sent into the field. A total of more than 35,000,000 pieces of this material was required. These forms, as well as the informational material, were distributed through the State agricultural extension services and the county agents to the meetings of farmers in all wheat-growing regions.

FORMAL APPLICATION REQUIRED

Each wheat producer desiring to enter into a contract to reduce his acreage in consideration of benefit payments was required to execute a formal application for such a contract. These applications served as a basis for membership in county or district wheat production control associations, responsible for determination of individual allotments, and also furnished data on individual production and acreage.

The application form carries a brief statement of the wheat plan, defines terms, gives the applicant's own statements of his crop acreages in 1933 and his acreage and production of wheat during the base period, and shows the relationship, if any, between landlord and tenant. (See exhibit 21 of appendix I.)

The contract itself is based upon information given in the application, and includes statements of wheat acreage during the base period, the average annual wheat acreage, the smallest wheat acreage, and the individual allotment in bushels. The agreement contains 19 provisions. They include the grower's pledge to reduce his acreage in 1934 and 1935 in the amounts required by the Secretary of Agriculture; to refrain from devoting the contracted acreage in 1934 and 1935 to the production for sale of any nationally produced agricultural product; and to limit the production of wheat on land owned by him but not covered by the contract. (See exhibit 22 of appendix I.)

Wheat Regulations, Series II, issued by the Secretary of Agriculture with the approval of the President, pursuant to section 10(c) of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, define terms used, prescribe the manner of organizing county or district associations and paying their expenses, and lay down the method of determining individual allotments. Under these regulations are included articles of association for the local organizations with membership made up of contracting producers. Committees of these associations, called county allotment committees, are empowered under the regulations to determine base acreage, base production, and allotment of each applicant in the county or district.

SUMMARY OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

The results of the campaign for wheat production control took both economic and social form. Of the 1,200,000 wheat producers of the country, 580,000 signed applications for contracts to participate in the program, and over 550,000 signed the contracts. The wheat acreage covered by these contracts totaled over 50,600,000 acres, or 77 percent of the wheat acreage of the United States for the base period 1930-32.

The acreage removed from production, as pledged in these contracts, amounts to 7,595,000 acres, or 11.5 percent of the average annuaĺ acreage during the base period.

It is significant that the percentage of wheat growers who signed the reduction contracts was highest in the States which are the largest producers of wheat. Kansas, planting during the base period more than 3,000,000 acres per year more than the nearest competing State, reported 91 percent of the wheat farmers signed up. North Dakota, ranking next to Kansas in acreage, reported 93 percent of the growers signing contracts. Oklahoma, third in average annual acreage, had 79 percent of her growers on the contracts; Montana, a close fourth in acreage, reported an 87 percent sign-up; Texas, fifth in acreage, had a 77 percent sign-up; and South Dakota, sixth in acreage, reported a 93 percent sign-up.

In the process of carrying through this campaign, farmers were brought into cooperative action and into individual and group realization of the problems facing their industry, to a degree which they had never reached before. The outward evidence of this group realization and action was the organization, among farmers who signed the contracts, of 1,450 county and district wheat production control associations covering 1,700 counties.

Local administrative work delegated to the officers and committees of these associations included checking and adjustment, where necessary, of individual farmers' estimates and reports on acreage and production. The associations and the committees within them formed effective channels through which information on the national and world situation of wheat was transmitted to the growers themselves, providing them with a basis for intelligently planning their own operations.

FARMERS' CASH INCOME INCREASED

The outstanding direct result of the plan and its execution, insofar as agricultural income was concerned, was the addition, up to December 31, 1933, of nearly $18,500,000 in cash in adjustment payments to cooperating wheat growers. The distribution of the first installment of these payments amounting to 20 cents per bushel on the domestic allotment of each producer, began on November 1. It had reached full speed at the end of the calendar year and is scheduled to continue until a total of approximately $66,500,000, completing the first instalment, has been paid to farmers.

The second installment, from which will be deducted the local administrative expenses of the program, will amount to 8 cents per bushel on the allotment and will be payable in 1934 when proof has been given that the contracts to reduce sowings have been fulfilled. The second installment will bring the total payments up to about $95,000,000. Checks are mailed from Washington to the treasurers of production control associations and distributed by them to the members of the associations.

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, with the cooperation of the Agricultural Extension Service, is distributing record forms that will cover the production and disposition of basic agricultural commodities on the farms whose owners have signed contracts to reduce production. These records will be used in establishing the proof of compliance with the contracts. Provisions are also being

41746°-34-5