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1936 › Alf Landon (Republican) › Farm prices and agricultural surplus
Cash benefits on the domestically consumed portion of export crops to make the tariff effective, limited to the family-type farm; no scarcity program, no processing tax
pledge_forwardspecific_pledgecandidate_directevidence A Agriculture⚡ Butler decision voids the AAA similar solutions · similar reasoning
Solution
Replace the AAA/soil-conservation 'subterfuge' with payments giving growers of hogs, wheat, cotton and tobacco 'an American and not a foreign price', capped at family-farm production levels, financed within a balanced budget; protect the home market.
Rationale
The AAA 'rewarded scarcity and penalised plenty', took the farmer out of foreign markets and 'put the foreign farmer into the American market'; the administration 'is still without a settled, workable, national policy for agriculture.'
Statements (6)
To provide in the case of agricultural products of which there are exportable surpluses, the payment of reasonable benefits upon the domestically consumed portion of such crops in order to make the tariff effective. These payments are to be limited to the production level of the family type farm.
Until these disadvantages are eliminated we propose to pay cash benefits in order to cushion our farm families against the disastrous effects of price fluctuations and to protect their standard of living.
The benefits which will be paid under our program will go no higher than the production level of the family type of farm.
We're going to see to it that the fanner whose crops have to be sold on a world market gets the equivalent of a really effective tariff.
I am far more interested in seeing farmers paid for growing the things we know we need than in paying them for not growing the things we think we don't need.
We can do this without violating the Constitution. We can do this' without imposing such burdens as the processing tax upon the con sumer.
Follow-through
not_applicable
The AAA of 1938 paid benefits without a processing tax (financed from the Treasury), as Landon had insisted, but kept marketing quotas and acreage allotments he opposed; no family-farm cap was enacted.
Enacted by others
| 1938-02-16 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | statute Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 | Treasury-financed benefits without the processing tax; production controls retained. source |
Reception (2)
Landon's Des Moines speech accepted 'the principle of national responsibility for agriculture' and offered a program competing with the New Deal's for the farm states -- the Coolidge-Hoover position was gone.
The Cleveland platform and now Gov Landon in his Des Moines speech accept the principle of na tional responsibility for agriculture and offer a program that seeks to compete with the Roosevelt admin istration's program
Landon told Iowa farmers the New Deal was 'robbing' them while promising continued checks -- read as pledging both economy and benefits.
New Deal Robbing American Farmer He Tells Iowa Corn Growers
Other positions on this issue
- Raise staple farm prices by a tariff-equivalent benefit plus voluntary production control, at no cost to the Treasury — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 specific_pledge
- Restore purchasing power to the farming half of the nation — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 directional_stance
- Farm prices can be restored only by general recovery and markets — no production control, no subsidies; repeal Farm Board stabilization — Herbert Hoover, 1932 specific_pledge
- Continue soil conservation and domestic allotment payments; end ruinous surpluses; commodity loans on seasonal surpluses — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936 directional_stance
1936-landon-farm-cash-benefits-limited-to-family-farm · created by claude-fable-5-1 · review: unreviewed