Agriculture: The Wheat Vote

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Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman picked up his phone, heard President Kennedy ask coldly: "What happened?" Freeman gave an honest answer: "I don't know."

What Freeman did know was that more than a million wheat farmers had gone to the polls and, in a vote that may well shape the future of U.S. agriculture, overwhelmingly turned down his plan for high Government supports and strict production controls.

In 22 previous years, wheat farmers had voted on similar but milder plans; each time they said yes by at least the two-thirds majority required for approval. But the margins had steadily dwindled, and Freeman had long known he was in for a real fight this year. He and his sprawling Agriculture Department campaigned tirelessly, told farmers that their choice was between $1 wheat and $2 wheat. Freeman's major antagonist was the big American Farm Bureau Federation and its president, Charles Shuman. The Farm Bureau's slogan: "Freedom v. Freeman."

To follow the returns, the Agriculture Department set up a regular election-night headquarters, expected to chart the ebb and flow of the vote late into the night. But by 7 p.m., Room 6768 in the department's main Washington building was a glum place. Far from giving Freeman's plan the necessary two-thirds, farmers refused it even a simple majority. The final vote was 547,151 for, 597,776 against (see box on following page).

For Flexibility. Only six states gave the Freeman program a two-thirds majority. One was Maine, where a mere 32 farmers cast ballots. The other five were all in the South: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. In none of these states is wheat nearly as important as cotton and tobacco. Both of these crops have long operated under high-support, strict-control programs, and Southern farmers have become so fond of the supports they will accept almost all controls.

Outside the South, the vote against Freeman's program cut across all regional lines. Of the nation's top wheat-producing states—Kansas, North Dakota. Montana, Oklahoma and Washington—only North Dakota, with 65.8% in favor, even came close to giving Freeman a two-thirds majority. Among the so-called corn-belt states, those west of the Mississippi tended to favor the Freeman program, although not by two-thirds. In these states —Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska—the price of corn often follows the price of wheat. Many farmers plainly feared that lower wheat prices would pull down corn prices.

The eastern corn-belt states were still another story. Michigan, Ohio. Illinois and Indiana cast about 300,000 votes, or one-fourth of the national total, and in each state the returns went lopsidedly against Freeman's proposals. In these states, the secret to successful farming is flexibility. Farmers there like to shift from crop to crop—mainly wheat, corn and soybeans—as prices and supply conditions change. But under Freeman's plan, a farmer's past wheat production would determine his marketing quota; farmers were apprehensive that establishing this wheat "history" would lock them into wheat production at the cost of flexibility.