Word: bensons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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LOWER FARM PRICE supports and higher acreage allotments will be asked of Congress by Secretary Benson. He wants authority to boost acreage for basic crops by as much as 50%, and to set price supports between 65% and 90% of parity (current range...
President Eisenhower's agriculture proposals, while they will probably be defeated by congressmen of both parties, are an encouraging sign of Administrative confidence in Secretary Benson...
...Benson has fought to solve the farm surplus problem by long-term retirement of economically weak small farms. At the present time, under the acreage reserve clause of the soil bank program, such farms retire acreage one year, when market prices are low and support prices high; then produce at full capacity the next year when demand rises again...
...equally effective brake on surplus farm production is the proposal to set the range of price supports at between 60 and 90 per cent of parity. With this weapon, plus elimination of "escalator" supports, Benson admittedly has the power to threaten economic ruin to large areas of agriculture. Yet Congressional charges that Benson wishes to become an agriculture "czar" confuse the threat with his long range goals. An anti-surplus program would eventually stabilize production and demand such that government support and control would be reduced, not increased...
Specifically, his major legislative recommendations--which had been outlined previously by both himself and Secretary Benson--asked for authority to set supports for cotton, corn, wheat, rice, peanuts and tobacco as low as 60 per cent of parity and to increase planting allotments of these crops as much as 50 per cent above levels now directed...