Farm Price Policy Supported

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27501, 8 November 1954, Page 8

Farm Price Policy Supported

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 6.

President Eisenhower s flexible farm price support programme was generally credited by political observers today with having survived its first test of voter sentiment. In spite of Democratic efforts to make the farm programme a major campaign issue in many places, Republicans gained significent election victories in farm belt States where the new programme will have the most effect, and Democrats who favoured it were generally successful. Supporters of the plan were heartened especially by the victory of Mr Thomas E. Martin (Republican) over Senator Guy M. Gillette in lowa, and Senator Andrew F. Schoeppel’s reelection over the former Democratic senator, George McGill, in Kansas. The farm issue was sharply drawn in both States. Some Republicans who won elsewhere differed with Mr Eisenhower on that issue, but the over-all results, observers felt, at least provided no regudiation of the programme. Most lemocratic gains were confined to urban areas.

Actually, the flexible support Plan is not yet in effect, and may face an even more significant test in 1956 after its effects become known. But a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which favoured a flexible programme even before Mr Eisenhower proposed it, said he thought farmers had taken it fully into consideration in casting their votes this year.