To: bimbo; Patria One
In 1953, he (Benson)drastically cut 5 million acres from the national cotton allotment. The following year, he added rice & tobbaco to the allotment cuts in addition to furthur reducing cotton. Then he sent out teams of feds to monitor Southern farms then charged them for remeasurements & then charged them again to have committees destroy the overage. In some cases, for as little as .02 acres over.
It's been noted that he was particulary harsh on Southern blacks who had their allotments cut 66% or more making it impossible for them to harvest enough to pay bills.
In 1955, he came down particulaly hard on Southern grown rice. In many cases his fed agents included 'personal' vegetable garden acreage when measuring the shrinking allotments.
In 1956, he backed the 'soil bank' programs which paid selected 'landlord' farmers a shut up bribe for unplanted acres which actually had the counter result of putting even more farm labor out of work while the landlords he picked got a free government check.
The whole time all of this was going on, he pushed other socialist farm programs that assisted big corporations in setting up huge production farms in non-Southern states. Particularly California & Iowa.
By the time he was done, at least one million less Southerners were living on a farm.
To: shuckmaster
Thanks. Bump.
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