Advice and Dissent

"The American farmer today is land happy and iron crazy. He buys bigger equipment because he figures he is going to own more land; then he has to buy land to justify the expense. Then the farmer realizes he is not making much of a living considering his capital investment, and he quits. "

This sharp dissent to the "get big or get out" philosophy comes from, of all people, David Garst, 52, the ruler of a family agribusiness empire big enough to make him a prairie Rockefeller. Based in Coon Rapids, Iowa, the business includes 8,000 acres on which the Garsts raise seed corn and breeding cattle, as well as a grain-elevator and storage operation, machinery manufacturing, the preparation and sale of agricultural chemicals, five banks and an insurance company. The Garst assets, which are divided among David, one brother, three sisters and their children, probably total more than $50 million. But as a supplier to farmers, Garst sees agriculture from a different perspective than his customers. His conclusion: the key to farming efficiency is not size but careful management and enlistment in a technological revolution of which Garst is a leader.

Being out front with ideas is a Garst family tradition. David's father Roswell, who died last November at 79, is remembered internationally as the corn grower who played host to Nikita Khrushchev on his U.S. tour in 1959. But on the prairies Roswell is remembered as a developer, with Henry Wallace, of hybrid corn. David, a blunt-featured bear of a man who graduated from Stanford ('50), is promoting innovation on his own. Among the techniques that he and his family have pushed:

> No plowing. For millennia, farmers have turned over the land with plows before tilling it, cultivating it and putting in seed. Now, machines are available that combine several operations in a process called minimum tillage. One machine, on which Garst and a partner hold the patent, cuts a V-shaped furrow in unplowed land and simultaneously drops in seed. Says Garst: "In a sense, we have gone back to the pointed stick."

> No rotation. Insecticides and herbicides have done away with the need to rotate crops in order to keep pests from infesting the soil. No longer must a farmer periodically allow his best land to lie fallow, or plant it with unprofitable crops.

>No waste. The Garsts have promoted the idea of feeding cattle corn cobs, stalks and leaves that traditionally were thrown away; when this "stover" is mixed with other nutrients, the beasts love it. If this method became universal, Garst estimates, the U.S. could fatten 50% more cattle than the 110 million or so now in the national herd.

Garst believes that "it is in livestock that we will see the great revolution of the next 20 years. We will be producing more meat less expensively, and we will have the opportunity for much more export." He is crossing U.S. breeds with European stock to produce "exotic" cattle that grow fatter faster or produce more milk. This is done by artificial insemination. Says Garst: "We have one of the largest accumulations of exotic semen from Europe."

But this revolution will not be fully effective unless Garst can nag farmers into changing some cherished habits. He preaches to buyers of his seed corn a doctrine of raising cattle themselves, rather than selling the corn to commercial cattle feeders. As Garst puts it, "What does the American consumer want most? Beef, eggs, milk and chicken. Every farmer used to produce a little bit of each of these things, but the American farmer has foolishly given up his livestock."

Garst also has strong ideas about Government policy. A fund raiser for Jimmy Carter in 1976, he now denounces Administration attempts to get farmers to "set aside"--i.e., not plant--part of their acreage in order to push up prices. The costly program, he thinks, wastes land and cannot work: farmers set aside their worst land, plant more heavily on their best acreage and grow record high crops. The Government, Garst argues, should press farmers instead to shift some corn land into cattle pasturage and soybeans.

Worldwide, Garst contends, the Government should go all out to promote exports, not only of food but of farm technology. One prospect: supplying farm know-how to Mexico, which now grows about 24 bu. of corn per acre vs. about 101 in the U.S., in exchange for Mexico's oil. If farms elsewhere could be made as efficient as those in the U.S., Garst asserts, the world could grow eight times as much food as it does--and "there do not have to be any food shortages anywhere in the world."

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