Word: bensons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...When Benson went to Europe," thundered Republican Congressman Usher Burdick last week, "we made a mistake by buying him a return ticket." Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson had curdled North Dakota's Burdick by announcing that federal price supports on milk and butterfat would be cut to the legal minimum, 75% of parity, on April 1. Current support levels: 83% for milk, 80% for butterfat. The cuts were needed, explained Benson, to shrink the "incentive for excessive production...
...dairy-product supports jumped 20% this year. Piled up in federal storage depots as of Dec. 1 were 12,500 tons of dried milk, 17,000 tons of butter, 89,000 tons of cheese. But politicos from dairy-farm states predictably joined Republican Burdick in bipartisan booing at Benson's announcement. ''A shocking injustice!" cried Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire. "A mistake!" snapped Vermont Republican George Aiken, an old Benson defender. Said Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey: "Mr. Benson has taken the place of Scrooge...
...seven-headed Hydra of Greek mythology was a tough monster to be up against: every time a head was cut off, two more promptly grew in its place.* Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson sometimes feels as harried and frustrated as a man trying to kill a Hydra. Under Benson, as under his Democratic predecessors, farm surpluses have kept right on piling up, and the nation's yearly price-support bill has kept getting bigger...
Four-State Experiment. Benson's 1956 soil bank plan was supposed to cut farm production, but after an expenditure of $61 million, out popped the new heads: while letting a farmer bank part of his land, it left him free to boost output on the unbanked acres, and surpluses set new records. Last week Benson announced a new plan that might at least keep the struggle even: get entire farms out of crop production. Beginning right away, he said, the Agriculture Department will let farmers in four scattered test states-Illinois, Maine, Nebraska, Tennessee-submit land-rental bids. When...
...whole-farm-retirement idea made sound sense to the U.S.'s biggest farmer organization, the 1,600,000-member American Farm Bureau Federation. Meeting in Chicago last week, the A.F.B.F. called for a "special effort" by the Government to get whole farms into a long-term conservation reserve. Benson's new approach also made sense, as a step in the right direction, to the respected Committee for Economic Development, a private organization of high-level businessmen and educators. In a thoughtful farm-policy study released last week, C.E.D. argued that it would be cheaper for the Government...