AGRICULTURE: Farm Bill at Work

Four months and 25 days and several million words after Congress convened with a farm bill as its main political goal, the U.S. had a new agricultural program. President Eisenhower, who vetoed the self-contradictory farm bill first passed by Congress (TIME, April 23), signed the new one last week—and within three days Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson began putting it into effect.

Ike had both praise and criticism for the new bill. The deciding factor in his mind was its soil-bank provision, which offers $1,250,000,000 in payments to farmers who agree to take crop lands out of production and place...

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