A Bumper Crop of Money

For decades, farm-bloc politicians have bid for higher and higher farm subsidies, claiming that economic depressions are "farm-led and farm-fed." Last week the U.S. saw the old cliche working precisely in reverse. Leading and feeding the recovery from recession was the sharpest rise in farm income since 1947, the greatest ever without a war. At the end of the second quarter of 1958, farm income had jumped to a seasonally adjusted rate of $13.8 billion annually, a solid $1 billion more than the rate for the previous three months--and a fantastic $3.1 billion more than the $10.7 billion rate of second quarter 1957.

Records & Ranges. The new farm prosperity spread across the board. Hardly a crop or an area failed to prosper. Producers of livestock and livestock products took in $9.1 billion in the first half of this year for what actually was a smaller quantity of meat, poultry and dairy products than they sent to market in January-June 1957. Even the surplus-ridden wheat, cotton, corn and other crop producers managed to boost sales by 10% to $4.7 billion. In some states the increase in farmers' cash receipts was nearly 100%. Texas farmers, from January through May, took in $704 million v. $489 million in 1957. Nebraska cash receipts jumped from $339 million to $479 million, and Kansas' from $212 million to $326 million. Leaving aside production costs, gross farm income during the first six months of this year ran at the rate of $38 billion --an alltime record.

What it meant to the economy was that the moneyed U.S. farmer was fast becoming a pillar of strength, buying and consuming with rare power to pick up the slack from other social groups. To many a businessman, the strongest market of 1958 is the farm market--the equivalent of discovering a rich, import-hungry foreign country. In Bloomington, Ill. Sears, Roebuck reports that its trucks go out loaded with freezers, ranges and refrigerators; on R.D.S. routes freezer sales alone are running 50% ahead of last year. Nor are appliances the only things that farmers want. With cash in his jeans, the U.S. farmer is turning into such a smart dresser that store clerks often cannot tell the difference between city and farm customers. His wife has already digested Vogue and the latest Paris fashions. Says Mrs. Nadean Reynolds, who had to park and walk eight blocks to her dress shop in Maryville, Mo. (pop. 6,834) last week: "I didn't mind. The parking spaces were taken up by customers. A chemise among the cornstalks isn't news any more."

Cessna & Cocktails. In the growing luxury market many a farmer is buying a plane, learning to fly as well as drive. Serving California's rich, irrigated Imperial Valley, an El Centre Cessna dealer reported that he had already sold four single-engined planes to farmers this year at prices from $8,999 to $15,000. A farm organization has put together $1,590 grand tours of Europe for its members this summer. Says the proprietor of Knoust's Party Shop in Phillipsburg. Mo. (pop. 170), noting that farmers are among his best customers for cocktail shakers, blenders and bar glasses: "The farmer around here is an urbane host. The cocktail before dinner is as much a part of his way of life as it is in town."

Throughout the broad farm belt the U.S. farmer is determined to live as well as his city cousin. And he has the money to do it.

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