Word: bu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last month Boone's own Kansas farm-bureau convention voted for the first time in its history to back a program 1) abolishing all acreage controls on wheat, 2) dropping price supports from today's $1.80 to $1.30 per bu. Nebraska and Colorado farm-bureau conventions voted for similar programs, in effect backed the position of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson and American Farm Bureau federation President Charles Shuman...
Benson succeeded in winning approval of his basic idea in the 1958 farm bill, which set subsidy rules for the 1959 corn crop. It abolished acreage controls, lowered price props toward the level set by the market (support price: $1.12 per bu.). But instead of cutting surplus production, as Benson unswervingly predicted, the no-control formula encouraged farmers to raise a bumper crop. And, as Benson's own department admitted last week, it swamped by 600 million bushels the previous all-time corn record set in 1958. Reason: farmers boosted production to make up for lower prices. Result: more...
...gall bladder) Ezra Benson last week got President Eisenhower's approval for the legislative proposals he will make to Congress early next year. Chief aim: to extend to wheat the same program that failed in corn, abolish acreage controls while lowering price supports from $1.77 to $1.40 per bu. Because the plan links support prices to the average market prices for the preceding three years (abandoning the old parity ratio based on 1910-14 figures), the Benson program will admittedly lead to a gradual downstep of prices each year. Benson believes that dropping prices will ultimately cut down...
Benson was wrong on both counts. Corn production is up by 600 million bu., and farmers piled on so much of everything else that net feed production is up 5%. On corn alone, Benson faces having to buy up to $672 million worth of this year's corn, on top of an estimated $1.8 billion worth of previous years' corn.* Meanwhile, storage, transportation and interest on earlier corn surpluses are costing $1,000,000 a day, more than twice the cost of maintaining the U.S. courts and Congress. Total added outlay for this year's corn charged...
...open market of the last three years, with a floor of 65% of parity. This year market prices are poor. Farm storage space is already so taxed that farmers will have to sell much of their crop in the open market at prices as low as 90? per bu., for the lack of a place to store it. Averaged over three years, the lower prices mean that a 4?-to-6? drop is possible next year in the price-support level...