Farm Policy

When President Kennedy opens up the New Frontier, one of the major problems facing him will be a vestige of the old frontier: the despairing (or, rather, disappearing) small farmer. This type represents 35 per cent of the farmers, owns one third of the land, and produces 25 per cent of the total agricultural output. Marketing crops worth between $2,500 and $10,000 annually, he and his family barely subsist from year to year after expenses have been paid. His larger competitors, the heavy industrialists or agriculture, have been edging him and his close relative, the part-time or retirement farmer, off the land at a rate of almost 200,000 a year. Without him, the farm problem would be very small.

The stage on which he plays is constructed of an artificial system of price supports, and of thousands of grain elevators, overflowing with surplus accumulated from the years after the Korean War, that open to flood the market every time the market price exceeds that guaranteed in price supports. Nor is the farmer the only man to suffer. Forced to buy crops on the high domestic market, the government then takes a loss when it must reduce its price considerably to sell them again on the international market.

To keep the surplus within bounds, under the present Soil Bank plan, the government pays the farmer to keep land out of cultivation. Every year, however, advances in technology have brought forth more produce per acre than ever before. With less and less land under the plow, surpluses continue to average about six per cent above domestic and export demand.

Ideally, a farm program will aim to restore the agricultural economy as nearly as possible to self-regulation and to provide for the welfare of displaced farmers and their families. Since any realistic farm program usually means political suicide for its proponents, the CRIMSON, well aware that it has no Congressional seat to lose, proposes the following six point farm program:

Farmers leaving the land and those attempting to fight the trend towards "industrial farming" have every right to a governmental helping hand. To facilitate the transition between rural and urban life and to provide migrants with the means to get started in another field, the government ought to offer to buy farms at reasonable rates. At the same time, a credit corporation on the lines of the Small Business Administration must be established to float loans for small farmers who wish to remain on the land, but who need to expand their facilities in order to survive.

To assimilate the now unemployed farmers, the government should provide facilities for vocational training and encourage the relocation of industries in predominantly agricultural areas. A new civilian conservation corps and a works progress administration may also be in order.

To save money and diminish surplus, payments in kind should be substituted for monetary subsidies now meted out under the present Soil Bank program. Such a procedure will not only reduce crop levels in grain elevators, but will also eliminate the present something-for-nothing benefits going to farmers who let the government pay their bills merely by threatening to plant extra acreage.

Other means of reducing surplus include distribution of cereals to domestic depressed areas and long term loans in grain to impoverished nations. The government ought to negotiate these loans at the current rate on the international market, but need not press for immediate collection. Such transactions would save face both for certain countries that might be humiliated to have grain almost literally dumped upon them, and for the United States, which might be attacked for sabotaging the international market with free handouts.

Congress must adopt Rep. Albert Quie's proposal to raise to 105 per cent of parity the minimum price at which the Commodity Credit Corporation can release its surpluses on the market. Such a measure would prevent the deluge of surplus that hits the farmers whenever the market price rises above that guaranteed by price supports.

After allowing the farmers from four to eight years to decide whether or not they will continue to farm, the government ought gradually to withdraw price supports. Coupled with a reduction in surplus, this action ought to leave the market on a fairly self-regulating basis. The payments-in-kind Soil Bank must remain in existence, an agricultural safety-valve to prevent the accumulation of further surplus.

It is to be hoped that President Kennedy will not pursue his campaign promises of stricter controls for agriculture. Despite the present recession, something must be done to cope with the present exodus from the American small farm and to ensure that the people remaining behind will not starve.