Word: corn
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...dawn broke over Illinois' cornlands last week, Farmer John Landers, 38, who owns 400 acres near Grand Ridge, opened wide the throttle of his big International tractor and roared into a 20-acre cornfield. The three heads on his $2,400 corn picker attacked the tall standing rows of corn. Long before Farmer Landers had made even one turn around the field, the trailer hitched to his tractor was overflowing with fat, golden ears. His expected yield: 90 bu. to the acre, v. less than 60 last year...
Enticed by U.S. corn-price supports that place no limit whatever on acreage, U.S. farmers have so expanded their corn plantings that this year's harvest will hit 4.4 billion bu., 17% more than in record 1958. Iowa, the No. 1 corn state, expects an 827-million-bu. harvest, up from the record 669 million last year. Illinois, No. 2, anticipates 696 million bu., up from 599 million. Even No. 3. Minnesota, looks for 360 million bu., an increase of 15% over last year, despite a severe drought...
Pick Your Acreage. The trouble for both farmers and taxpayers lies in the new corn-support laws passed by Congress last year. Under the old system, farmers who voluntarily restricted their acreage were protected by a support price of $1.36 per bu., while those who planted all they wanted to plant got only $1.06. The new law, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, aimed at compromise with a straight $1.12 per bu., with no attempt to control acreage. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson rashly guessed that there would be little increase in corn production. Even when farmers disclosed their...
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...
Agriculture experts hope that a rapid price drop will discourage production. The U.S. corn farmer, already unhappy about this year's low prices, has an answer to that: rising productivity that enables him to grow ever bigger crops for ever bigger total subsidies, no matter what the price...