Word: wheats
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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With a cool $32 million to give away last year, the Ford Foundation has sprinkled its largesse into many a remote cranny.* Last week it was training its sights on a tract of blooming farmland near Jericho, where the crops are wheat, oranges, and above all, hope. It is a Boystown -the first in the Middle East-for Arab children left homeless and orphaned by the Arab-Israeli...
...Choice. No such quota controls have been set on wheat since Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard fixed them for the 1943 crop. Benson had no choice. The 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, still in effect, says that the wheat-marketing restriction machinery must be thrown into gear when the wheat supply reaches the "crisis point." That point is keyed to the prospects for domestic consumption and export of wheat. When this year's bumper crop is in, the total supply is expected to be 17 billion bushels,† the greatest on record, 28% above the crisis point...
...factor in the wheat glut is a sharp drop in the export market. U.S. exports of all farm products this year are running 30% under last year. Chief reason: the tremendous shortages created by World War II have largely abated. This returns the U.S. to the familiar situation where protection for its own producers, including some farmers, keeps other nations from earning enough dollars to buy U.S. products...
Longing Eye. The next step Benson's Agriculture Department must take into the wheat field is to fix acreage allotments for individual wheat farmers. Benson's staff is delaying that step until Congress acts on bills that will increase the total allowed U.S. wheat acreage. If the limit is raised, the acreage cuts (which would average 30% under the present limit) would not be so severe. After the department sets farm-by-farm allotments, wheat farmers will vote on whether they want the quotas. If two-thirds approve, all wheat grown on allotted acreage will be supported...
...wheat-quota decision is only one instance in which Secretary Benson has been forced to sacrifice principle. He is the victim of an ever-mounting headache created by high, rigid price supports. The supports encourage farmers to overproduce; overproduction menaces prices; falling prices lead to more support and/or quota restrictions on production. Because of falling prices and the demands of dairy farmers, Benson continued dairy price supports at 90% of parity. As a result of the drought in the Southwest, he moved in to hold up the cattle market. To prevent a glut in cotton, he will almost certainly have...