U.S. Congress Awaits Plan To Solve Farm Surplus

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27861, 9 January 1956, Page 9

U.S. Congress Awaits Plan To Solve Farm Surplus

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, January 7. President Eisenhower will on Monday send to Congress his plan for solving the problems created for the United States, and the entire free world, by the United States’ vast 8,000,000,000 dollar surplus stocks of foods and fibres.

The object of the Eisenhower Administration, according to Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent, is to get rid of the pricedepressing surplus, get the Government out of the subsidy business, and bring the farmers into the booming prosperity enjoyed by almost all other sections of the community.

In his State of the Union message on January 5, President Eisenhower expressed determination to find some way of disposing of old surpluses, of preventing the accumulation of new ones, and of alleviating the conditions of farmers now caught between declining farm product prices and rising farm production costs.

On Monday he is expected to spell out in greater detail recommendations to step up all the existing programmes for giving food surplus away to schools and charitable organisations in the United States, or the free world: bartering it away overseas for strategic and other materials; persuading United States consumers themselves to buy more food and eat their way out of it, selling it for non-convertible foreign currencies; and lending other countries on generous terms the money with which to buy it. The hope of the Administration is that these programmes will result in an early rise in United States farm income.

The political urgency now driving on the Administration and both parties in Congress to speedy action derives from the fact that Presidential and Congressional elections take place after the harvest next November.

The Administration, now engaged in countering new Soviet economic moves in the stepped-up cold war. cannot afford to lose support amongst its friends.- the correspondent said. Nor could it afford to offend potential allies or neutrals. Too aggressive disposal of food and fibre surpluses overseas could give rise to serious friction with the governments in the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world who are themselves preplexed by agricultural surpluses of their own.