Operation Consume

Talking to a crowd spread across the hillside at Guthrie Center, Iowa last week, Richard Nixon wanted the farmers to know that they are the last people he would hold responsible for the costly farm program. Fat farm surpluses that have kept farm profits so slim, said he, are the "product more of politics than of productivity. It is wrong to blame the farmer for the fact that Government illogically insisted upon unrealistic incentives to keep production up, while at the same time it conjured up bureaucratic controls in a futile attempt to keep production down."

Since Government got the farmer into difficulty, said he, "Government should unhesitatingly, as a matter of obligation, help indemnify him to get him out." Government programs had been "too timid and too little" up to now he said, not mentioning either the Eisenhower Administration or Agriculture Secretary Ezra T. Benson by name.* Present surpluses, said Nixon, should be disposed of; future surpluses should never be allowed to accumulate. And at the 21st annual plowing contest in Guthrie Center, Nixon discussed the four parts of "Operation Consume," his plan for dealing with the surplus part of the problem. It calls for:

P: Intensified U.S. effort to funnel farm surpluses into the United Nations' Food-for-Peace Program, plus a careful development of foreign markets in underdeveloped countries for American produce.

P: Creation of a strategic food reserve at home, stockpiles set up at convenient points in case of enemy attack and periodically renewed with fresh supplies.

P: Setting up a "barter" system by which farmers would be paid out of present surpluses for keeping part of their acreage idle; farmers could then sell or feed to livestock the surplus grain they received.

P: An urgent study of methods for converting excess grain into low-cost protein foods, e.g. canned meat, powdered milk and eggs, for distribution at home and abroad.

All this, said Nixon, would cost the U.S. more at first, but "we must, and should be willing to pay more in order to take a big bite out of the surplus" by a target date four years hence. "No more exciting challenge will confront the next President and his Administration than that of making a national asset, rather than a liability, out of our nation's ability to produce more food and fiber than any other people on earth."

This week in South Dakota, Nixon promised to spell out the second half of his program: "Operation Safeguard," designed to prevent the production of more farm surpluses while "Operation Consume" eats up the plenty that the U.S. already has.

* Lyndon Johnson was ready to fill any gaps: Nixon, he said, had defended Benson's farm program "for seven years and seven months, but now wants the voters to believe for the next 60 days that he favors the Democratic approach on the surplus problem."

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