Farm Policy

Although neither political party has suggested a permanent solution to the farm problem, the Republicans have at least been able to define the problem. While the Democrats talk about "preserving a way of life," the Republicans have frankly stated that there are too few buyers and too many producers. More courageous members of the Eisenhower Administration have gone so far as to say, "Too many people are trying to stay in agriculture."

Unless there is a vast and unexpected expansion in the domestic and foreign markets, the Republican belief that there are too many farmers must be accepted as the most realistic, if not the most humanitarian approach. Both parties have made similar suggestions on how to enlarge the market--increased distribution to schools, the needy in this country, and abroad. But foreign markets are limited because any large-scale sales or grants driven down prices on the world market. Such a move would hurt if not ruin the economies of many friendly nations.

As it will be many years before the market can be expanded sufficiently to meet supply, the solution to the problem must come thorugh limitation of production. On this point, both parties agree that the soil bank is a partial solution. Under this program, originally a Democratic idea, farmers are paid to take land out of production, thus cutting crop sizes and raising prices.

The soil bank is a direct handout which merely reduces the surplus wilthout attacking the basic problem. Just how much it affects production is, moreover, questionable. At best it is a temporary measure which drains millions from the economy by literally paying men for doing nothing.

The main and most controversial method for cutting production is flexible price supports. This Republican proposal would lower price supports, encouraging if not forcing farmers to reduce the supply and thus drive the price up again. Democrats maintain that under flexible supports, as profits go down, farmers try to earn more by producing more, not less. Recent statistics would seem to support the Republicans. Under flexible supports, the surplus was reduced from $8.9 billion to $8.1 from January to July of this year. In the third quarter of 1956, net farm income went up for the first time since 1951.

Flexible supports appear not only to work in the short run, but they also show promise of helping to solve the long-range problem. The Republican plan keeps constant pressure on the farmer to cut production of non-profitable crops. In the short run the farmer might produce more, but as his margin of profit gets lower and lower, he will either leave the farm, or encourage his children to. The farmer who will move first is the one who is most inefficient, usually the family farmer.

Rigid supports, on the other hand, create an artificial and expensive situation which places no pressure on farmers to cut or end production. While rigid supports are not the "mockery and deception" Eisenhower calls them, they do approach legalized vote buying.

The Republican farm platform, unfortunately, stops once the inefficient farmers have been forced off the market. The soil bank and flexible supports will have cut production and the number of producers. But there is no concrete proposal on what to do with the unemployed farmer. To avoid a depression, as well as for humanitarian impulses, these men must be re-employed.

Republican economic theory allows for no measures strong or direct enough to create industrial jobs for these unemployed. Jobs must be created not only to absorb farmers, but also to attract them. In this context, Stevenson has advocated long range-range Federal aid and development in depressed areas, which would certainly be a partial solution. He has, in addition, envisioned wide scale development of small industries in non-urban areas. While he did not mention this idea in reference to the farm problem, Stevenson has the insight and the imagination to make the application.

The Republicans, in the meantime, are to be congratulated for facing the realities of the farm problem and telling them to the American people. The Democrats, it is to be hoped, will begin where the Republicans end by proposing vigorous and imaginative development programs in agricultural areas.