Questions & Answers

Des Moines, surrounded by Iowa's fabulous black loam, is in the heart of U.S. farm country. There last week Elder Statesman Herbert Hoover, talking to the nation and twelve members of the Midwest Governors' Conference, got quickly to the heart of the U.S. farm problem.

Said Herbert Hoover: "Of the different sectors of the home front, food is the greatest. It stands next to the military effort in importance. . . . Agriculture must rank with munitions. . . .

"[Yet] there are symptoms of a dangerously degenerating agriculture that must be stopped. . . . We have today at work in America uncanny parallels with the same degenerative forces that have been so disastrous in Europe. Like them, we have drawn undue manpower from the farms. . . . Our farm machinery is wearing out faster than the replacement. . . . Our protein feed for animals is very short. We are compelled to divert our nitrate fertilizers to explosives. . . . We have a price system in force that often strangles production and distribution. And prices are often below the farmer's cost and just wages.

"If we wanted any further evidence of this degeneration we can find it in the despair that leads to auction sales and in the abandonment of farms. We can find it in the undue killing of dairy cattle. We can find it in the shops without supplies for the housewife for days at a time. We can find it in local famines of meat or butter or potatoes or something else. We can find it in the epidemic of black markets all over the country. . . ."

10,000,000 Acres. Yet, said Herbert Hoover, "there is no cause for alarm provided we set about remedy, and quickly." He repeated his recommendations for better food administration, simpler price controls (TIME, Feb. 1). And he concluded with one real justification for optimism:

"There can be no doubt that the men & women remaining on [the farms] are putting forth the absolutely maximum effort to produce everything they can. They are working a 72-hour week at wages less than any other group. They are showing the highest courage and fortitude. But there are things that cannot be remedied by them alone."

Four days later came statistical documentation of Herbert Hoover's tribute to the farmer. In Washington the Agriculture Department issued its annual spring planting forecast, based on reports from farmers all over the country. The figures were astonishing to the point of a 20th-century miracle: despite their troubles, despite bureaucrats, hell & high water, farmers will plant 279,000,000 acres--10,000,000 more than last year. They will plant 20% more peas and beans (good meat substitutes), 10% more soybeans, 21% more peanuts and flaxseed for oils, 14% more potatoes, 6% more corn to fatten their cattle and pigs. Food Administrator Claude Wickard had never dared hope for such figures. Nor had the nation.

Not all the 279,000,000 acres would be brought to harvest. Farming is at once the crudest and the most delicate work of man. There were the possibilities of drought, insect plagues, crop diseases, an even graver shortage of farm labor by harvesttime. But the farmers were working. They would start earlier in the morning, work later into the night, share their plows and combines, find a neighbor's boy with time to help a little. To Iowa, where Herbert Hoover spoke, many a retired farmer was returning from California to help his son with the chores.

One way or another--whatever Washington did or failed to do--the U.S. farmer was determined to carry on. He had earned more help than he was getting.

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