AGRICULTURE: Louder for Less

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If there is anything everyone knows, it is that the U.S. farmer is sore about his subsidy programs. But if there is anything nobody knows, it is what to do about it. On Capitol Hill, the working political assumption is that the farmer wants handouts, handouts and more handouts. Yet anyone who takes the trouble to ask the farmer himself is likely to get some startlingly different answers. Last week the big (circ. 3,100,000) Farm Journal announced the most remarkable results yet of a farm poll. The Journal asked its subscribers to vote on whether they wanted 1) more support, 2) less support, or 3) no support at all. Results: of the first 10,000 replies, fully 78% were for lower supports and fewer controls. Of these, 55% wanted the Government to get clear out of the subsidy business.

Predictably, the biggest vote for high supports came from the grain fields of the Midwest. Yet even in Iowa, most subsidy-minded of all states, better than half of the farmers favored lower supports or none. The voting, by areas:

No Supports Fewer More

East 77% 18% 5%

Midwest 47% 25% 28%

South 59% 22% 19%

West 63% 21% 16%

Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, who has been forced by congressional attitudes into taking half-a-loaf measures toward ending the farm scandal (result: a staggering $7 billion for farm programs this fiscal year), was swift to seize on the Farm Journal survey. Said Benson, speaking to 2,300 farmers gathered for Farm and Home Week at Cornell University: "Farmers recognize that the old basic-crop legislation is outmoded. It has placed ineffective bureaucratic controls on farmers, destroyed markets, piled up surpluses, and imposed heavy burdens on taxpayers . . . The voice of the American farmer calls in louder and louder tones for more freedom to act and less Government interference. If this is what farmers want, what are we waiting for?"