IKE ON THE FARM-

The case for the Administration's farm program as detailed by President Eisenhower in Peoria:

FOR almost ten years, as farmers' costs have gone up, year after year, farm prices have gone down. There are two exceptions when prices went up. One was the tragic year when the Korean battlefields provided the kind of market that no one wants. The other is this year. And this year there is no war.

Now what mainly caused that long, discouraging decline? One thing only: political expediency in Washington, D.C. . . . And what were the results? For one, Uncle Sam himself took up farming. Synthetic farmers behind Washington desks started telling farmers all over again what crops to plant, how much to grow ... the prices to charge. You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield . . . The value of the Government stockpile of farm surpluses climbed to $9 billion. The cost of storage alone has been $1,000,000 a day--none of it going to the farmers and with farmers helping to pay the bill. And these surpluses, by holding down farm prices, last year cost farm people some $2 billion.

Head-On Attack. I'd say we have come pretty far in 45 months . . . We freed peacetime agriculture from programs designed for war. We eliminated Stirling wartime controls. We attacked the menacing surpluses--head-on. We regained many of the lost markets. We helped the lowest-income people in agriculture. We brought social security for the first time to operators of family farms. We refunded to farmers the $60 million-a-year federal tax on farm gasoline. We started the great St. Lawrence Seaway project--the 30-year dream of Midwestern farm families . . . And we turned prices back up--without a war.

I have two things to say about this beginning. First, the old price-depressing Democratic farm program stayed in effect right up to harvest last year . . . Eighty-five per cent of the price decline after the Korean war inflation came while rigid price supports were still in effect. Our opponents today are criticizing the mess that they themselves left behind.

Second, recent developments prove that the clean-up part of our job is well on its way . . . Part of that assurance comes from our new soil bank . . . This year the soil bank is retiring over 12 million acres and earning 500,000 farmers more than $260 million. When next year it retires 40 million to 50 million acres, overproduction will start coming under control. That means better times for every farmer.

Parity in the Market Place. Full income parity is a full share in our country's good times. In a free agriculture, farmers can attain that kind of parity only in the market place. That's what I spoke for at Kasson four years ago: the attainment of that full share for the farmer . . . That's what I have been working for. I shall keep on working for it. And the facts show good progress.

Today farm foreclosures are near an alltime low. Today more farm operators own their own farms than ever before. Today the value of farm lands is at an alltime high. Today farm income is at a $1 billion rate above last year. And the long decline in farm prices has stopped. Prices today are higher than last April when I vetoed that hodgepodge that the politicians called a farm bill. Prices are 7% higher than last December. They are higher than a year ago, when high rigid price supports still applied . . . And we will keep on doing all else that is fair and constructive--all that is not political quackery--to bring our farm people the only kind of prosperity they want--prosperity that can be enjoyed in time of peace.

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