Word: bensons
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Down on the Farm. The only real weak spot in IQSS'S economy was farming: U.S. farmers were-or thought they were-in serious trouble. All year long Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson manipulated the Government's farm controls, imposed flexible price supports, acreage allotments, marketing quotas. But he was running a losing race against the technology of farming. With bigger machines, better seed and fertilizer, farmers produced enough to feed a much bigger population, and the nation's surpluses mounted-14.5 million bales of cotton, 938 million bu. of wheat, 3.2 billion bu. of corn. Inevitably...
...short, the farmer was more a political than economic problem. But in an election year no one expected the problem to become smaller or the expense of supporting crops any less. To trim the mounting surpluses, Secretary Benson was mulling over a sheaf of plans for more crop sales abroad, a soil conservation plan that would take land out of production. But a conservation plan would cost an estimated $500 million, and the U.S. already has $7.5 billion tied up in crops. Moreover, the new plans called for more and more restrictions on how farmers tilled their land. Thus...
Preparing the Package. While the Farm Bureau was taking its stand, Ezra Benson was meeting in Washington with his National Agricultural Advisory Commission to draw the outlines of the Eisenhower Administration's 1956 farm legislative program. The plan will turn around the six points that Benson listed earlier (TIME, Dec. 12), including a soil bank. Benson was considering the Farm Bureau's certificate gimmick, but he had not decided whether to accept or reject it. (Secretary Benson last week announced a new plan designed to reduce the surpluses: he will give surplus wheat, corn, rice and dry beans...
...filled his 1956 legislative package, Benson was trying to fit in an item to cover every situation. As of last week he favored a ceiling on the amount of Government support any farmer can get, a proposal that had a remarkable pair of recommendations from the left-of-center Farmers Union and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey. The Farmers Union sees it as a way to hold down the amount of U.S. funds going to big farmers, and George Humphrey sees it as a sensible protection for the Treasury...
After the legislative package is filled and tied, the Secretary of Agriculture plans to eat his way through a series of breakfasts with Congressmen, selling his plan between bites. While he is still clinging tightly to his principle of flexible price supports, Ezra Benson in 1956 will be aiming, far more than ever before, to please the farm politician and the farm voter...