Word: wheated
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...bill would cost an estimated $3 to $4 billion a year. It provides for a direct dole to growers of wheat, cotton and feed grains when prices drop below fixed target levels. The targets are much higher than the historical market price of these commodities, thus increasing the chances for bigger handouts and locking an inflationary bias into farm policy for the next four years. For example, at this time last year the selling price of wheat was $1.69 a bushel: corn was $1.30 and cotton 35 cents. In the Senate version of the bill, the Government would make...
Many farmers feel cheated because they let go of their wheat crop at about $1.35 a bu. in the early summer of 1972, before the Soviet purchases and heavy buying by other nations helped push the price received by farmers to more than $2 a bu. Congressmen are miffed that grain companies and ship operators collected needless federal subsidies. Shippers are recovering from a nationwide transportation tie-up that resulted from grain dealers' scrambling for freight cars to transport grain, much of it to the Soviets. Consumers have particularly good reason for anger: the deal contributed to a grain...
...June 1972, to seek financing for what was then a $750 million sale, they left the impression that they would want mostly such livestock feeds as corn and soybeans, of which the U.S. then had plenty. As it turned out, the Russians bought about 433 million bu. of wheat, 246 million bu. of corn and 37 million bu. of soybeans...
...Butz failed to move quickly to stop Government export subsidies to the grain companies. If the domestic wheat price exceeded a target level of about $1.63 a bu.. including transportation from the farm to Gulf ports, an exporter could claim a subsidy for the difference. When the Soviets started ordering last summer, the subsidy was about 6? a bu. Incredibly, Butz's office let the payments continue for nearly two months after the first sales, until the subsidy swelled to 47?. If the handouts had been halted, the export price of wheat would have shot...
...Even after it became apparent that the Soviets were on their way to acquiring one quarter of the entire U.S. wheat crop, Butz did nothing to put more farm land into production. This would have increased supplies and helped hold down prices this spring. Instead, earlier in 1972, Butz had actually moved to decrease the growing acreage. He did this by a policy of raising wheat "set-asides" (land that the Government pays farmers to keep idle) from 20 million acres to 25 million acres. It was only in early 1973, at the vigorous prodding of the Cost of Living...