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Show Anderson Recommends Price Support Changes Authority for the Secretary o! Agriculture to support the price: of agricultural commoditier generally through loans, purchases, purch-ases, payments, and other opera tions w as among the reeomni'. n dations recently made to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry by Secretary o Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson The Secretary's testimony oi, a proposed long-range farm program pro-gram including these othe points also suggested that mandatory man-datory price support activities be made mandatory only for non-perishable commodities fo which the law provides mechanisms mechan-isms for keeping supplies in line with demands, that no sup ports lie available when farmers vote down quotas in a referendum, referen-dum, and that the Secretary should he authorized to provi.i", price supports for any commodity at whatever level might b'( deemed desirable in eases where, in the public interest.' i' became necessary to obtain increased" in-creased" product ion. With respect to the price sup port level for mandatory commodities. com-modities. Secretary Anderson'' suggestions were as follows: 1. That mandatory supports be provided at not 1. ss ti,.,n ,;0 n, cent of parity, but that the See rctary be permitted to set sup. ( ports for the basic commodities at a level up to 90 per cent of parity. 2. That price supports to coop-erators coop-erators be no less than 75 per cent of parity in those years when marketing quotas were actually in effect. In line with previous recommendations recom-mendations to the Congress, the Secretary again recommended that the "parity" formula shoulJ be modernized, to reflect recent historical price relationships among commodities and to include in-clude the cost of "hired" labor in calculating the parity index. |