Word: bensons
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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...
There was no longer much doubt that harried Ezra Benson is going to run up against sharp pitchforks on Capitol Hill in the session just ahead. The Agriculture Department predicted last week that, with improved moisture conditions in prospect, 1958's winter wheat harvest will run a glutting 28% bigger than 1957's. But far from taking the wheat forecast as further evidence that the high price-support approach has failed (TIME, Dec. 23), Chairman Harold D. Cooley of the House Agriculture Committee declared that Benson "won't get to first base" with his proposal to lower...
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...