The Rich Get Richer

Indicting farm subsidies as "a multimillion-dollar Great Society giveaway," Delaware Republican John Williams told the Senate last week that five U.S. farms in 1966 collected more than $1,000,000 each in acreage diversion, price support and other payments.

The big harvesters and the programs under which they received payments as listed by the Agriculture Department: Griffen, Inc., Huron, Calif., $2,397,073 (cotton); South Lake Farms, Five Points, Calif., $1,468,696 (cotton and feed grains); J. G. Boswell Co., Corcoran, Calif., $2,807,633 (cotton); Salyer Land Co., also of Corcoran, $1,014,860 (cotton and feed grains); and Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., Honolulu, $1,236,355 (sugar). Eleven other farms collected more than $500,000 each; 258 received between $100,000 and $500,000.

With furrowed brow, Williams called for a $10,000 ceiling on all direct farm subsidies. "Based upon these large payments," he said, "it is obvious that the small family-type farmer is not the real beneficiary of our present farm program, but rather the Government is subsidizing an expansion of the corporate type of farming operation."

Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman had a testy reply: "Our farm commodity programs work because farmers cooperate in diverting acreages from surplus crop production into soil-conserving uses. Many of them do this at a financial sacrifice because they know balanced supplies are in the interests of all farmers. Commodity program payments are not welfare grants." Nor, he might have added, are many of their recipients exactly welfare cases.

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