Word: soils
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WHEN Congress last year created the soil bank, it hoped that by paying farmers to take land out of cultivation of price-supported crops a big bite would be taken out of farm surpluses. Both parties were so sure the bank was a good thing that they endorsed it in their platforms, even quarreled over who thought it up in the first place. A fortnight ago, as it appeared that the soil bank this year would cost more than $700 million, the House voted to eliminate $500 million in funds requested to operate the soil bank in 1958, in effect...
...soil bank was a compromise from the start. After campaigning for years to get rid of costly, futile, surplus-accumulating price supports, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson was forced in pre-election 1956 to settle for much less flexibility in price-support levels than he wanted. Reluctantly he and the Administration adopted the soil bank, a three-year program of paying farmers to reduce production, with the hope that after 1959 surpluses would be gone, and farmers could get back to a free market. In its favor were plausible arguments about conserving the soil, preventing erosion, etc. But even before...
Much of the opposition to the soil bank is based on the charge that it is highly partial in whom it helps. Apart from the relatively unimportant conservation-reserve phase, the benefits are confined to producers of the five price-supported crops-wheat, corn, cotton, rice and tobacco. Such crops account for only 23% of total farm income-leaving the producers of the other 77% totally outside the benefits of the price support or soil-bank pro grams. The soil bank has turned out to be a money bank for the corn belt and Great Plains wheat states, plus...
...basic argument against the soil bank is that it is failing to reduce production. By pouring on the fertilizer, planting the rows closer together and cultivating more intensively, farmers are producing almost as much as before. For 1957, the U.S. signed up 233,453 farmers to take 12,784,968 acres of wheat out of production in return for $230,974,475 in payments. This should have cut output 20%, but the now ripening winter-seeded wheat crop (the bulk of the crop) is expected to be 703 million bu., only 4% under the 1956 total of 734 million. Moreover...
...appropriation bills for the various Government departments-State, Justice, Commerce, etc. The House score at week's end: cuts of nearly $1.5 billion and an ambition to cut $1.5 billion more. In one outlandish saber dance the House cut off all 1958 funds for the Administration's soil bank program, designed to ease farm gluts by paying farmers to take land out of production. Chances were good that the Senate, or even the House itself, would reverse this drastic action, but the 192-187 vote was a sign that in the ecstasy of economy-and the chance...