Word: bensons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week In Washington, the U.S. again took the lead in agreeing to a new wheat pact, which will guarantee it exports of 270 million bushels. For Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson, who believes that international price-fixing is fundamentally wrong, it was a distasteful assignment. But withdrawal by the U.S. would have been taken as a sign of repudiation of U.S. pledges of world economic cooperation, and would have provided Russia with a potent propaganda weapon sure to be used...
...biggest bread-grain crop in world history last year. The U.S. is also facing a glut at home. Last week the Agriculture Department upped its forecast for the winter wheat crop 17%. It looked as though 1953-5 crop, though no record, would be big enough to force Benson to impose acreage allotments and marketing quotas...
...Benson also thinks the Agriculture Department can help in developing new markets abroad, and by encouraging industrial research into new uses for farm products. Says he: "I'd like to see Du Pont, for example, go into corn research and do for corn and its potential byproducts what they have already done for coal...
Educating Up & Out. All such projects would help. But a basic problem would still remain: the U.S. has too many marginal farmers (an estimated 1,600,000), who barely scrape along from year to year. Many of Ezra Benson's advisers, along with virtually everyone else who has studied the problem, think that marginal farmers must either be educated up to the level of profitable farming-or educated clear off the farm and into jobs in town. While barely making a living themselves, the marginal farmers add to crop surpluses, help drive prices down and Government costs...
...farms of the U.S. last week, there was still a gnawing uneasiness about prices. There was also uneasiness about Elder Benson and his free-market ideas. But, for the most part, U.S. farmers seemed prepared to give him a chance. Said a Kansas corn man: "We're holding judgment on Secretary Benson like on the new country preacher whose sermons may run out in a few Sundays." Meanwhile, Ezra Benson was putting his faith in the Lord-and cooperative free enterprise. Said he: "A completely planned and subsidized economy weakens initiative, discourages industry, destroys character and demoralizes the people...