Growing Unrest on the Farm

THERE is a recession in the Midwest farm belt, a region Republicans have often taken for granted as "Nixon country." Among farmers the recession is sowing seeds of unrest that Democrats hope to harvest next year in the form of votes. Thus it was far from coincidental that President Nixon last week made three announcements to demonstrate his concern about agriculture's current agonies: he 1) accepted the resignation of his pleasant but unaggressive Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin; 2) replaced him with a combative former Eisenhower agriculture aide, Earl Butz; and 3) dropped his unpopular plan to abolish the Department of Agriculture as part of a broad Cabinet reorganization.

To be sure, the President downplayed the politics of his moves. Nixon explained that Hardin, a pipe-smoking former chancellor of the University of Nebraska, had wanted out as early as three months ago to accept "an exceptionally attractive offer" as vice chairman of Ralston Purina Co., a large cereals and feed processor in St. Louis. Yet it was also true that Hardin had, perhaps innocently, become a political liability. Many farmers considered him an ineffective spokesman for their interests; others did not even recognize his name--with the result that Nixon became the object of their discontent. Conceded one of Nixon's political aides: "We've all been saying for a long time that whether it was Hardin's fault or not, he had to go. Instead of commiserating with farmers, he tried to use statistics to show them how well off they were."

Nixon said he intended to retain the Agriculture Department but pare some of its "peripheral" functions so it could "concentrate exclusively" on serving farmers. Actually, his earlier plan to drop the department was going nowhere in Congress, and had become an enticing target for Democrats from agricultural areas. The department has become so unwieldy and inefficient that Nixon's plan to absorb its functions in a broader Cabinet division had administrative merit, but farmers feared, with some reason, that it would further dilute their influence.

Rural Lightning Rod. While no Secretary of Agriculture can hope to be popular, Butz, 62, is an outspoken, Indiana-farm-born veteran of agriculture politics who can serve as Nixon's lightning rod for rural complaints, much as Ezra Taft Benson did for President Eisenhower, and Orville Freeman for both Kennedy and Johnson. A former head of Purdue's School of Agriculture and currently dean of continuing education at Purdue, Butz was an assistant secretary to Benson from 1954 to 1957. Since Benson was highly unpopular among farmers, that makes Butz an odd choice for the job, and Democrats quickly seized the opening. Democratic National Chairman Larry O'Brien attacked Butz as "one of the chief architects of the Benson policies that forced hundreds of thousands of farmers off the land." Yet Butz served notice that he intends to fight for farm interests. Shortly after Nixon introduced him to newsmen, he turned to Hardin and said pointedly: "The price of corn is too low for comfort, Mr. Secretary --it's below the cost level."

The low price of corn is indeed the most immediate object of agitation in the grain, hog and cattle lands of the Midwest. Iowa farmers have been getting only about 95-c- for a bushel that experts say they must spend $1.08 to produce. A year ago, when blight severely limited the harvest, corn was selling for more than $1.50 per bu. Anticipating more blight this year, the Agriculture Department encouraged greater production by reducing the acreage that would qualify for payments if diverted from corn. But the blight did not become serious. "I got on my tractor, and the weather was so perfect for planting corn, that I just kept on plowing and plowing--planting more than I had intended," concedes LaVerne Wood, who farms 1,400 acres in Iowa's Cedar County. The ideal weather continued through much of the season. The result was a record corn harvest, about 5.5 billion bushels--35% more than last year.

As the record crop pushed prices down, the West and Gulf Coast dock strikes prevented corn and other grains from reaching foreign markets. Such big buyers as Japan turned to other sources of supply, including Thailand, Australia and Argentina. Chicago grain dealers estimate the loss to U.S. farmers at $500 million, with no certainty that all those markets will return next year. Since one-fourth of all crop production in the U.S. is exported, any permanent diversion would be damaging. Moreover, the inability to ship the corn overseas taxed the always tight storage facilities, as well as clogging railroad cars and river barges. Farmers have been forced to pile up their corn in fields and towns. In Illinois alone, 4,000,000 bu. of harvested corn are on the ground--and about 10% of the fields in the Midwest are still to be harvested.

Worst Year. Other crops have also soared in quantity, driving farm income down. The wheat harvest is up 250 million bushels over last year, grain sorghum 195 million bushels, and barley 60 million. The grain avalanche had long been predicted (TIME, Sept. 27), but its adverse impact on farmers has been worse than expected. While the farmer gets less per bushel, his costs have continued to rise. Parity, which is the relationship between the prices farmers get and the prices they have to pay for nonfarm goods, has fallen to 69%. When Nixon campaigned for the presidency, he assailed the existing 74% as "intolerable" and "dismal." A two-row corn picker that cost $3,600 five years ago now costs at least $5,000. In Illinois' Whiteside County, Frank McCue, who owns a highly mechanized 1,500-acre feed-grain spread, complains: "This is absolutely the worst year we've had since we settled here in 1943. My costs are way up and so are my debts. If corn stays at this price for another year, I'll probably be forced to sell out." A rural Iowa banker predicts that if conditions do not change, 25% of farmers dealing with his bank may be unable to meet their loan obligations next year and may give up farming.

Politically, it will be difficult for the Administration to alleviate the rural woes by Election Day and things could easily get worse. Some experts estimate that up to 1.5 billion bushels of this year's unsold corn will carry over into next year's market, working against a price rise. Many farmers will feed their corn to hogs and cattle, which could yield a sharp rise in pork and beef production and depress the livestock prices at about election time. This happened in 1970, partially accounting for the Republican farm unrest that cost the G.O.P. five governorships in the Midwest.

Distress Selling. "There will be a farm revolt," predicts North Dakota Republican Senator Milton Young, who questions only just how big the uprising will be. The fear is so great that 22 Republican Congressmen from the corn belt wrote Nixon this month to urge "prompt and decisive action. The Midwest farm economy simply cannot endure continued distress selling by our feed-grain producers." Some Democrats even see the possibility of the kind of farm upset that gave President Truman his victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Despite all of the complaints by farmers that they are being ignored, the Nixon Administration has not been oblivious to farm problems or to the political dangers they contain. Nixon's announcement this month that he had arranged for the sale of $135 million in feed grains to Russia has led farmers to hope that more such sales, including possibly to China, may be in the works. The Agriculture Department has announced its 1972 feed-grain "set-aside" program four months earlier than usual. In an attempt to drive prices up, it will more than double (from 18 million to 38 million) the acreage to be taken out of production, at a cost to the Government of an additional $700 million in diversion payments. The Administration also earned the appreciation of dairy farmers when it reversed an earlier decision last spring and raised the support level for manufactured milk from an announced rate of $4.66 per 100 lbs. to $4.93.

Nixon's moves last week were a clear demonstration of his rising concern; his aides hint that other action will be taken to get farmers to vote their traditional Republican sentiments next year. Republicans are well aware that while farmers constitute only 4.7% of the national population, they are grouped so that farm-related industries employ 40% of the labor force in such a key state as Illinois, a predominant 80% in Iowa, and one-third or more in Wisconsin, Kansas, Indiana, Missouri and Minnesota. "You can't forget 1970," concedes an official of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. "But the President has a bomb in the air almost every day--I can't believe he's going to let that happen again."

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