National Affairs: THE $5 BILLION FARM SCANDAL Every Day In Every Way It Gets Worse

WHEAT COMBINES HARVESTING TROUBLEMAKING BUMPER CROP IN BENTON COUNTY, WASH. 12 TIME , AUGUST 19, 1957

RESTLESS combines growled and rattled across the rippling wheat fields of the Northwest. In the South, newly picked cotton sped through gins and balers. Midwestern farmers sweated in fields of hay and ripe, yellow oats. Across the nation, the yearly harvest was under way, and despite drought in the Northeast, the worst in 35 years or more, many a U.S. farmer could agree with Fred Hill of Umatilla County, Ore. Pushing back his Stetson, lanky Farmer Hill, 44, cast an admiring eye over a field of ripened wheat and said with a grin: "The Lord's been good to us again. She's gonna be a hon ey." The Agriculture Department agreed.

Topsy-Turvy Values

By yardsticks of common sense, the promise of a bumper harvest ought to measure up as an unmixed blessing. But in the U.S. of 1957, the soil's abundance has become a costly national problem that turns values topsy-turvy, makes good crop weather seem a national calamity and drought a boon. In a year of bountiful crops, the Agriculture Department will spend a record $5 billion, largely in an effort to cope with surpluses. Instead of going to markets, countless tons of the wheat, corn and cotton harvested last week will swell the $5.5 billion worth of farm surpluses stored in U.S. Government silos, warehouses and cold-storage vaults, which already hold more wheat than the nation consumes in a year and a pound of cheese for every man, woman, child and white rat in the country.

The glut is largely the fault of the federal price-support program, a mode of agricultural life so obsolete that in its present form it amounts to a national scandal. Designed to cope with the problem of farm surpluses, it brings on bigger surpluses by setting high price supports. Designed to keep small farmers from going broke when surpluses drag prices down, it actually helps the poorest farmers least and the richest most. Designed to bolster the health and welfare of agricultural communities, it has tempted many a farmer to sharp practices because "only suckers" would refuse to take advantage of the loopholes in the law. Designed to cut surpluses by subsidized sales of grain and cotton abroad, it is so rigged that, as overseas sales are successful, price supports rise automatically — hence bring on more surpluses. Designed to ensure farm stabilization, it has instead warped the farm economy, e.g., Northwest farmers, restricted on wheat acreage, grow barley instead, and are now starting a cattle-feeding program to use the barley. "The hell of it is," said one of them, "all it would take is an administrative ruling right now to rip up the whole program."

Political Reflex