Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994)

An agricultural scientist and food-marketing specialist, Ezra Taft Benson was raised on his Mormon family's farm in Whitney, Idaho. From 1918 to 1921, he attended Utah State Agricultural College and then went to England on a mission for the Mormon Church. On his return to the United States, Benson operated the family farm with his brother Orval and also studied agricultural science at Brigham Young University, where Benson received his B.S. degree in 1926. In 1929 Benson joined the agricultural extension service of the University of Idaho, working as extension economist and marketing specialist. Within these years he had become an active force in the farmers' cooperative movement and organized the Idaho Cooperative Counsel, for which he served as secretary from 1933 to 1938. In 1939 Benson was elected executive secretary of the National Council of Farmers Cooperatives, a post he held until 1944. During this period he also served the cooperative movement as its representative in Washington, D.C. In Washington D.C., Benson urged the federal government to extend agricultural cooperatives and improve the management of its surplus crop purchase programs. He became an outspoken foe of government bureaucratic farm controls and crop subsidies. In 1943 Benson was chosen as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the governing body of the Mormon Church, and he devoted himself fully to his religious responsibilities during the World War II years. After the war he supervised the church's postwar program of distributing food and supplies in Europe. From 1946 to 1950 he was director of the Farm Foundation and was greatly sought after as a farm-marketing specialist. During the 1950s, Benson strongly urged farm cooperatives to rely less on federal subsidies and controls and more on providing service to their members. He also viewed farm cooperatives as a key component of the nation's free enterprise system, and he continued to urge cooperatives to improve both their farming methods and marketing techniques. Although his church role limited his participation in politics, Benson supported William Howard Taft over Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Republican 1952 presidential nomination. Nevertheless, after Eisenhower's victory, the new president chose Benson as his secretary of agriculture, a move endorsed by both the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union. Accepting this cabinet post on leave of absence from his church, Benson tackled the serious problem of huge crop surpluses by ending fixed farm price supports and adopting a flexible scale to curb production. He also launched a soil bank program in 1956 to encourage farmers to withdraw more land from crop production. During Eisenhower's two terms in office, Benson's policies enjoyed some success and reflected the administration's conservative farm policy. (Bowker Author Biography)

— biography from A Witness and a Warning: A Modern-Day Prophet Testifies of the Book of Mormon

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