U.S. Programme To Retire Farms

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28537, 17 March 1958, Page 11

U.S. Programme To Retire Farms

(Rec. 7 p.m.) '•WASHINGTON, March 15. The United States yesterday embarked on a new farm “revolution” under which farmers will be paid for doing nothing. The Secretary of Agriculture, Mr Ezra Benson, announced that the Agriculture Department would participate in an experimental programme to retire whole farms from production. Strictly a trial scheme and a very limited one in its application, Mr Benson said . that bids had been accepted from 354 Maine farmers who offered not to grow any crops on their land if the Agriculture Department

would pay them over a period of years. The acreage to be retired from production would be very small—only 20,273 acres out of a total of thousands of millions of acres planted every year under farm products in the United States. Mr Benson said that the Agriculture Departmerit would accept bicis to retire whole farms based on a return to the farmer of 11 dollars 57 cents an acre. The contracts would stipulate that the farmers would not grow any farm products on their acres for either five years or 10 years. The plan to retire farms from production was placed before Mr Benson months ago as a possible way to reduce the output of farm products. It was hoped too that the plan would appeal to farmers of marginal land, soil that was not

good and that showed low yields. The Agriculture Department would like to see such land removed entirely from production. Good crop weather in recent years and increasing yields to the acre have resulted in evermounting surpluses of wheat, corn, cotton and rice as well as other farm products in spite of efforts of the Agriculture Department to unload its surpluses by various subsidy programmes through exports and donations both in the United States and abroad.