Agriculture: How to Shoot Santa Claus

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mechanical era that substituted horsepower for horses, and continues today; 2) chemical breakthroughs in fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides that largely eliminated hand-labor; 3) biological improvements in plant and animal strains; 4) the managerial phase, which promises even greater future gains from the use of computers to plot every facet of farm life.

In the brave new world of U.S. agriculture, Shuman's solution for the U.S. farm problem is perhaps too simple and old fashioned. He wants the Government to phase out price supports, notch by notch, over an extended period. In addition, Shuman would retire from 50 to 70 million acres of cropland as a way of reducing production and keeping prices firm. Says a less venturesome farm official: "Charlie has a religion that a free market is the only right way to deal with agriculture. I don't think he fully understands it. His creed is the oldtime Methodism: work hard, save your money and everything will turn out right." Indeed, Secretary Freeman argues that abolition of Government commodity programs and a return to the free market "would mean instant disaster for much of agriculture."

18¢ Tears. Studies by non-Government economists at Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Cornell and Pennsylvania Siate back him up. Their findings: 1) net farm income, now running about $12.6 billion a year, would fall 40% to 50%; 2) farm prices would drop 25% to 30%, livestock prices would fall 10% to 20%; 3) two-thirds of the U.S.'s 437,000 farmers who sell goods worth more than $20,000 a year would be wiped out. "This situation," said Freeman, "would not only bankrupt most farmers; it would mean economic and social ruin for most of rural America and a serious economic setback for the whole nation."

Even as things are, farmers argue, they have been badly hurt by the widening gap between the prices they get for their crops and the cost of food at the supermarket counter. A recent Government study of the $36.7 billion worth of crops and livestock sold by farmers in 1964 showed that they averaged only 37¢ on the dollar. The grower receives 2.5¢ for the corn in a 29¢ box of cornflakes, 2.5¢ for the wheat in a 21¢ loaf of white bread, 25¢ for the cotton in a $4 shirt. The farmer's share of the take has declined 15% in 20 years, and is still going down.

For her part, the housewife spends only 18.5% of her husband's take-home pay for food, and is giving her family more variety, more nourishment, and higher-quality meals than are eaten anywhere else on earth. Still, her shopping trip tends to be a traumatic experience. Chicago Housewife Diane Kroll groaned: "At these prices, you have to be rich to afford an ulcer." Adds Roberta Pearson, a Chicago mother of three: "When you only get three small onions for 18¢, you don't have to grate them to get tears in your eyes."

All but Pre-Eaten. Despite housewives' tears, the price of food in recent years has actually risen less than the prices of most other items in the cost-of-living index. And, in a way, the housewife has only herself to blame for supermarket shock. No longer willing to grate cheese, shell peas or roll pastry, she demands premixed, pre-podded—all but pre-eaten—food that takes a minimum of kitchen time and costs more to process.

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