Word: bensons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...production of surpluses. To meet 1954 commitments, the Administration had to ask for an increase from $6.7 billion to $8.5 billion in the amount it can spend on the price-support program. To meet the long-range aspects of the problem, the President and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson proposed a basic change in the farm program...
...troubles, said George Humphrey, "when I say my prayers at night, I thank God I am not Ezra Taft Benson." Ezra Benson, Apostle of the Mormon Church, needed all the divine guidance he could get in his new job as Agriculture Secretary. He inherited enormous problems-falling farm prices, huge surpluses, a price support system that encouraged still more overproduction. Like his businessmen associates in the Cabinet, Benson thought that what the U.S. needed was more freedom, notably in agriculture...
...thought this could be obtained by gradually dropping the support level for crops until the farmer was on his own, except for what Benson termed "disaster" conditions. But the farmers did not want freedom if it meant lower prices; they preferred controls and proved it by voting overwhelmingly to let the Government tell them exactly how much wheat and cotton they could plant and market...
...record, and a rise of $2.5 billion in a year. In short, in the greatest boom in history, the U.S. had produced $2.5 billion more food than needed, largely because production was not for market but for Government purchase under the support program. The year proved that Free-Marketeer Benson could take no steps toward solving the farm program until the farmers themselves wanted freedom...
...Benson's words and the Farm Bureau's action indicated that the Administration's new farm program will lean toward "variable" supports and the law of supply and demand...