Opinion ID: 108014
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the first federal program

Text: The drop in commodity prices during the depression years destroyed the equilibrium of the 1920's and utter chaos ensued. Congress, in an effort to restore order to the market and boost the purchasing power of farmers, enacted the licensing provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, 48 Stat. 31, 35. Under § 8 (3) the Secretary of Agriculture was empowered [t]o issue licenses permitting processors, associations of producers, and others to engage in the handling, in the current of interstate or foreign commerce, of any agricultural commodity or product thereof, or any competing commodity or product thereof. Such licenses shall be subject to such terms and conditions, not in conflict with existing Acts of Congress or regulations pursuant thereto, as may be necessary to eliminate unfair practices or charges that prevent or tend to prevent the effectuation of the declared policy and the restoration of normal economic conditions in the marketing of such commodities or products and the financing thereof. The Secretary of Agriculture may suspend or revoke any such license, after due notice and opportunity for hearing, for violations of the terms or conditions thereof. . . . Under the licensing system base-rating plans not unlike the private arrangements that obtained in the 1920's were adopted. [6] Producers were assigned bases which fixed the percent of their output that they would be permitted to sell at the Class I price that was paid for fluid milk. [7] The viability of the licensing scheme was jeopardized, however, by judicial decisions disapproving a similarly broad delegation of power under the National Industrial Recovery Act provisions, 48 Stat. 195. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495 (1935). With its agricultural marketing program resting on quicksand, Congress moved swiftly to eliminate the defect of overbroad delegation and to shore up the void in the agricultural marketing provisions. Section 8 (3) of the 1933 Act was amended in 1935 and the pertinent language has been carried forward without significant change into § 8c of the present Act. Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, 50 Stat. 246, as amended, 7 U. S. C. § 608c (1964 ed. and Supp. IV). [8]