Open for Business

Just one week after the Administration's new $1,250,000,000 soil bank opened for business, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson reported some heartening transactions. "Good progress," said he, "is being made in Kansas, Illinois, Texas and Iowa." In Iowa alone, between 12,000 and 15,000 farmers have signed up for the plan; county agents are guessing that as many as 75,000 of Iowa's 192,000 farms will participate in the plan before the July 20 deadline.

What Benson did not say was that in Iowa, as in other drought-ridden states where a man makes a decision with an eye on the weather and a hand on his pocketbook, thousands of canny farmers are treasuring options that will permit them to withdraw their land from the soil bank by July 20 if they change their minds. Reason: if enough rain falls before that date, many will go ahead with their crops in anticipation of a higher per-acre income than the soil bank would pay (an average of $44 an acre) if the crops were plowed under. End result: rain or no, the politically touchy farm states may well look kindly upon Benson and his boss, come November.

Leaving nothing to chance, Republican National Committee Chairman Len Hall this week will open a farm-belt campaign office in Chicago. Under Colorado's former Governor Dan Thornton, the office will send squads of campaigners into the Midwestern states to beat the drums for the G.O.P. If they get a chance to use their umbrellas, so much the better.

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