National Affairs: Upturn on the Forms

If prices were going up, so, happily, was the farmer's income. After four years in the fever-land of falling income—in part induced by price-depressing surpluses—the farmer has reached a turning point. His condition is better and his prospects are good, reported Department of Agriculture economists last week. Realized net farm income is up 4% over 1955 and should rise an additional percentage point next year.

Why the upturn? A "decisive" factor, explained Agriculture's Economist Frederick V. Waugh, was "government programs," e.g., the Administration-sponsored soil bank, which last September began to pay farmers to withdraw 12 million acres from production and put them to soil-conserving measures. The figures bore him out: of the 1956 rise—$400 million over last year's $11.3 billion—some $250 million is from soil-bank payments. Next year, when up to 45 million acres are to be set aside, the payments will be that much higher, and so should be the cut in the surplus. The hope: by 1958-60 the surplus-reducing soil-bank program, besides raising farmer income, should have a strong bolstering effect on prices by more nearly balancing supply and demand.