No, Thanks

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan, who wants more than anything else to win the friendship of U.S. farmers and thus influence U.S. elections, was beginning to find out that farmers are not easy to please. Ever since he offered his plan, which would promise fanners high selling prices and consumers cheaper food (TIME, April 18), Brannan's popularity with farm organizations has been frostbitten.

Last week at its convention in Sacramento, the National Grange, second largest of the three main U.S. farm groups,*condemned the Brannan plan and went beyond; it also questioned many of the chief points in the whole support program. It called the Brannan program "an internal cancer that would ultimately destroy our free enterprise system."

"The Brannan plan," said the Grange, "has totally undesirable political implications . . . That party which would promise farmers the largest bonus out of the Treasury would garner many votes not obtainable on ... an honest, sound platform. It would then become a race to see which party would promise most.

"Dependence on subsidies or production payments in lieu of a fair market price as a method of achieving [a fair farm] income is unsound and would impose a burden on the whole American economy through tax liability which would raise all costs of production--thereby lowering purchasing power and ultimately leading to a lower standard of living for the rank & file of consumers. [It] would place farmers at the mercy of congressional appropriations for their income."

*The first, the American Farm Bureau Federation; the third, the left-wing Farmers' Union, supports the Brannan plan.

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