Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1949-04-29
Brannan,s Program
Could Bring New
Hope For Farmers
By Bradford V. Carter,
LPA COlumnist

GO SIMPLE and reasonable and direct is the
~ program for our farm economy that Agri-
culture Secretary Charles Brannan has pro-
posed that even the most hidebound men in
the farm organizations and in Congress have
had to withhold their fire of attack.
Scrapping all of the devious methods used
In the 20's and '30s to save the farmer from
losing his land, Brannan's program assumes
that healthy agriculture and healthy indus
trial economy must grow together. He assumes
"a stunning assumption to many an oldster-
that farmers want to and should produce the
most useful goods, and that the program should
be aimed at this Thus, instead of gearing his
program to the soil depicting cotton and corn
agriculture, Brannan would encourage produc-
ton of the goods that are scarce now-milk
and fruits and vegetables and soy beans for
processing
In addition Brannans program, which is
also the Truman Administrations would as
sumo that the farmers income should be kept
at the high level it has been through the war
and postwar years. This would for the first
time, make agriculture an attractive way of
life for the hundreds of thousands of young
men and women whose equivalents in the 20's
and 30s moved almost en- masse into the cities
because their skills and energies just couldn't
be used at home It will put more and more
emphasis the smaller, family size farm with
adequate mechanization, and less and less on
the biggest farms.
Basis of the Fair Deal farm program is
proposal to guarantee to farmers, under gen
eral program of producing what consumers
most need and want, price for their products
that will pay them little more than they're
now getting for most of their products The
products would be sold in the open market
and the federal government would pay the diff
erence if there was any, between sale price
and guaranteed price.
All other recent farm programs Except
for scattered price programs of this sort used
by OPA for milk and dairy products and pea
nut butter and a few other foods during the
war; have required the government to pur-
chase, and virtually hold off the market, GER
tain major agricultural products when their
prices went below fair level, This fair level,
parity" is calculated by an ancient and hard
to-understand formula which had little rela-
ton to the 1949 world
Who'll pay the farmers the difference be
tween a sale price that consumers can afford,
and the guaranteed price that will give farm
ers a living income? That's where the attack
on the program comes in. Because it will be
the big fellows-the people who make
much money that they can't possibly buy their
share" of cotton shirts or milk for the kids or
fresh fruit for the lunchbox They'll be paying
for the farm program, just as they're paying
for the present parity program, through their
taxes.
The two important almost revolutionary
effects this new program would have are these.
'l--if the program passes Congress in the
next two or three or four years, 1t will mean
that those farmers who want to produce what
the city consumers need will be able to do this
with assurance that the farmer and his family
will have the same degree of security that the
industrial worker has.
2-It will mean for the first time in U.S.
history, that the lower r-priced foods will be the
most nutritious ones-that the next generation
of Americans, whether they live in cities or on
farms, will have all they can eat of milk and
apples and green vegetables and table fats as
a matter of course, instead of as a matter of
privilege when the paycheck is extra big.