Price Supports for Farm Products

Report Outline
Price Supports and the Outlook for Agriculture
Development of Present Price Support Program
Proposals for Change in Existing Legislation
Special Focus

Price Supports and the Outlook for Agriculture

Scheduled expiration of wartime price supports for agricultural commodities at the end of 1948 has forced Congress once more to take up the whole complicated problem of keeping farm income in balance with the income of the non-farm population. Unless Congress passes new legislation at its present session, government floors under farm prices will drop next year to the much lower levels prescribed in farm relief legislation of the 1930's.

The need for revision of the “permanent” price-support laws adopted under the New Deal has long been recognized. President Truman warned more than 15 months ago, in his annual message to Congress, Jan. 5, 1947: “We must not wait until the [wartime] guarantees expire to set the stage for permanent farm prosperity.” And the Department of Agriculture has repeatedly urged early action on a coordinated long-range agricultural program.

Hearings on a bill by Sen. Aiken (R., Vt.) to modernize the government's price-support program were opened by the Senate Agriculture Committee in mid-April. The House Agriculture Committee has completed elaborate hearings on a permanent national farm policy, but the only measure on which its members have been able to agree to date is a stopgap bill to extend wartime supports in modified form in the event that permanent legislation cannot be enacted in 1948.