Reagan seeks grain-pay plan

Press, 11 December 1982, Page 9

Reagan seeks grain-pay plan

NZPA Washington President Ronald Reagan said yesterday that he would ask Congress to approve a new farm programme permitting the Government to pay farmers in grain rather than cash when they agree not to plant all their acreage. Under the plan farmers would receive Governmentowned./ grain, primarily wheat and corn, in return for cutting back on production. They could use the grain in any way they wished, either to feed it to their animals or sell it on the open market.

The announcement came after Mr Reagan had met his Agriculture Secretary, Mr John Block, who had proposed the so-called pavment-in-kind system because the Government was paying out unexpected billions of dollars in farm price supports and building up tremendous stockpiles of grain it cannot use. The price support system has become a burdensome drain on the Treasury because the recession has depressed farm prices while American farmers continue to produce big surpluses.