<--PREV Doc #1408  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1410 Document #1409; April 26, 1955 To Ezra Taft Benson Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVI - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part VII: "Nothing could be worse than global war"; January 1955 to May 1955 Chapter 15: Searching "for an honorable peace"   Dear Ezra: I understand there is a possibility that farmers may, during the current year, vote against accepting further acreage controls. If this should happen, what do we do? I should like to have a little memo on the subject.1 As I remember, price supports should automatically drop to fifty percent in such event, but I am not sure this is mandatory or discretionary with the Secretary.2 I am quite certain that if it is mandatory and prices would actually begin tumbling in the current crop year, we would have to seek some kind of emergency authorization from the Congress because we could not allow prices to drop to the point where there was real distress in our agricultural areas.3 Sincerely 1 Benson would reply to the President on May 3 with a memorandum concerning the "forthcoming wheat referendum." The farmers were to vote on marketing quotas, the amount of crop farmers could produce on acreage allotments (on allotments see no. 1071). If more than one-third of the voters rejected marketing quotas, then price supports for 1956 would fall to 50 percent of parity (U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 63, pt. 1, p. 1052). If farmers approved marketing quotas, price supports would be set at 76 percent to 80 percent of parity. Benson estimated that an unfavorable vote would cause market prices to decline by 32 percent in 1956 and would depress wheat prices in 1955 (Benson to Eisenhower, May 3, 1955, AWF/A; see also New York Times, Apr. 10, June 26, 1955). On price supports see nos. 525 and 652). 2 According to Benson, the Farm Bureau had suggested that the Secretary be given the discretion to elevate price supports above 50 percent of parity in the event farmers rejected the quotas. 3 Benson had discussed the issue with the National Agricultural Advisory Committee, which promised to forward recommendations to him (Benson to Eisenhower, May 3, 1955, AWF/A). On June 26 more than three-fourths of wheat farmers would vote to continue the use of marketing quotas as a means of controlling crop surpluses (New York Times, June 26, 27, 1955). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Ezra Taft Benson, 26 April 1955. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1409. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1409.cfm <--PREV Doc #1408  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1410

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