Furious Farmers

Pushing for plumper prices

Belching diesel exhaust, 6,500 tractors lumbered along a Georgia interstate last weekend, bound for Atlanta. Meanwhile, eight "tractorcades" rumbled into Topeka, Kans., and similar demonstrations occurred in a dozen more Midwestern state capitals. In Washington, D.C., 600 tractors and other farm vehicles gathered near the Washington Monument. Across the country, farmers were rallying to show that they were ready to strike in order to force prices higher. Their motto: "No more producing, no more selling and no more buying."

Yet it seemed most unlikely that American farmers, traditionally an independent and antiunion lot, would be eager to do that. Most leaders of established farm organizations oppose the call for a strike, which first came from a group of Colorado ranchers and then was spread through the farm states.

Whether or not they support the strike, farmers are in a fighting mood. Drought has badly hurt many in the Southeast, and two years of bumper harvests around the world have depressed farm prices. The Government estimates that net farm income this year will be $20 billion, down a painful 33% from the alltime high in 1973. The average farm family will earn only $5,300 this year, excluding off-the-farm income. As Washington Rancher Lee McGuire says, "Some farmers are absolutely flat-ass broke." Among the flattest are young farmers who bought their land and machinery in the early 1970s when prices were high and saddled themselves with heavy mortgages.

The more militant promoters of the farm strike demand that the Government boost price props so much that the price of wheat and corn would about double, cattle would go up 69% and hogs 47%. Doing that, warn Government agricultural experts, would bust the budget, raise domestic supermarket prices and squeeze U.S. farm products out of foreign markets. But the Carter Administration has made no effort to squelch the farmers' protests or strike plans. Says Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland: "I've talked to the President. The protests are a legitimate expression of concern. We're watching with sympathy and interest."

In any case, Bergland anticipates better times soon. Expecting that export demands from the Soviet Union will grow next year, he expresses "guarded optimism" for grain prices. Indeed, commodity prices have risen slightly during the past two months, and farm prices were the largest contributing factor to the 1.5% increase in wholesale prices during that period--just as militant farmers were trying to drum up support for their strike.

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