FARMERS: Pigs to Market

Because sows will farrow, because piglets will grow up into fat hogs regardless of Government decrees, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration has been hard put to devise a means of reducing the swine surplus comparable to the plow-under of cotton. Last week A. A. A. accepted in principle a price-upping plan from the National Corn-Hog Producers Committee of 25 which had been grappling with the problem in ten States for a month. The scheme’s whole purpose was to get 500,000,000 Ib. of live pork out of the way by Jan. i, four times that amount next year, by rushing to market little pigs before they became big pigs, brood sows before they had another litter. The proposal called for:

1) The slaughter in 46 days of 1,000,000 sows weighing 275 Ib. or more. That would reduce next year’s pork supply by 5,000,000 unborn pigs. Packers would pay producers a premium of $4 per sow. With hogs now selling at about $4 per cwt., a 275-lb. sow would thus bring $15.

2) The slaughter in 46 days of 4,000,000 pigs of 100 lb. or less, thus preventing their glutting the market later at twice their weight. To induce sales, packers would pay above-the-market prices on a sliding scale from $9 per cwt. for 40-pounders or less down to $6 per cwt. for animals between 91 and 100 Ib.

3) “A very substantial processing tax” on all hogs over 235 lb., thus putting heavier swine at a market discount and prompting farmers to sell their pigs before they became huge porkers.

Packers were to sell their emergency hog purchases as pork to relief agencies at a nominal sum, as fat to soap manufacturers, as tankage to fertilizer dealers. The A. A. A. was to reimburse them for the bounties they paid out to hog raisers. The scheme would cost the Government up to $65,000,000. That sum would be derived from applying a regular processing tax to ali pork products which packers could pass on to consumers of ham, bacon, sausage, chops, lard.