More Powerful Than Atom Bombs

The "old Hoosier horse trader" (as Jerry Ford likes to call Earl Butz) was very pleased a few days ago to hear his Communist counterpart in Rumania say "You have something more powerful than atom bombs. You have protein."

The Agriculture Secretary naturally agrees. Indeed, his eyes shine as he bites into a cheese sandwich and ruminates on his vision of the American land From Ohio to the Rockies and from Canada to the high plains of Texas, he says there is no place like it on earth--the fertile soil, the good growing climate, a topography well suited to mechanical operation, and farmers with the skills and capital to make the most of their opportunity. In the decades ahead, this area and its people --with its rich crops of wheat, corn and soybeans--just may be civilization's most valuable resource, more valuable even than oil and forests and minerals In Earl Butz's little study, which has a horse collar, a buffalo skull and other rustic memorabilia on the wall, the Secretary can almost smell the rising power of food in economics, politics and the pursuit of peace. In those 16 Central States with 1,198,848 sq. mi., 223,260,000 acres are in crops worth $54 billion a year, almost twice as much as the U.S. consumes. This treasury of food is a resource that renews itself each year.

Most people now know that the Soviet Union's greatest (and growing) problem is its faltering ability to feed itself. All of the Russians' missiles and their vast oil reserves could dramatically shrink in importance if their food shortage gets worse. Butz has heard that concern from Leonid Brezhnev himself.

And in Iran, awash with oil, officials pleaded with Butz to help them increase their food production. In Cairo and Warsaw and a dozen other capitals where a Secretary of Agriculture used to get a hasty treatment they now roll out the red carpet. Chuckles Butz:

"When I come calling with wheat in my pocket, they pay attention."-

The food and hunger expert Lester R. Brown says, "The issue is no longer whether food represents power, but how that power will be used." Butz is admittedly a politician as well as an agricultural economist. He would use the power of food more aggressively to restrain the Soviet Union and increase American influence in ravaged areas.

Before the President goes abroad, he usually gets a call from old Earl, who just suggests for the umpteenth time that the crops are mighty good back in the heartland.

In this country, as the scent of new money and power spreads a lot of changes are taking place, and more are expected. The big-oil boys (petropower, says Butz) who have had their way m Washington for so long, now face a challenge from agri-power. No new farm bloc has formed on the Hill because the new food equation embraces everyone from Wall Street bankers to the hired hand. But if the various interests in food can find common ground, the pressure that such a lobby could bring would dwarf anything seen in the capital so far.

Out in St. Louis, where the American Farm Bureau Federation is meeting this week they are waiting to hear what Jerry Ford is going to say in a scheduled speech. But they also are going to listen to a treatise on "Agriculture: A Public Utility." That thought--implying close regulation and price controls--scares them to death. They will fight it with their pitchforks if necessary.

In those states of the long horizon and the rich topsoil, the changes are already being felt. Land is up to as much as $ 1,500 to $2,000 an acre. The kids with college degrees are coming back home to the farms. There are more jobs in the small towns The corporate giants are planning to acquire more land, and some state legislatures like the one in Iowa, are battling back by setting up corporate-ownership limits to help preserve the family units. It is another drama of change, with potential for pain and fraud, but richer still with portents for renewed American pride

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