Very Down on the Farm

The President goes to Iowa, bearing good cheer

As presidential fence-mending trips go, the visit to Donald Dee's place last week was picture perfect. Alighting from he U.S. Marine helicopter in sweltering 90° heat, Ronald Reagan strode accross the front yard of Dee's 500-acre hog farm in central Iowa and shook hands with his smiling host. The President headed for the farmyard, where he gingerly scratched the ear of Shank, an 800-lb. boar freshly scrubbed for the occasion. Then he and his Agriculture Secretary, John Block, perched themselves on a picnic table and chatted amiably with a group of 40 farmers, all of whom had voted for their guest in 1980. The President sipped lemonade, spooned into homemade peach ice cream and drew hearty laughs with vintage Reagan storytelling.

His hosts surely needed the cheering up. America's 2.4 million farmers are struggling to survive the worst slump since the Depression, caught in a vise of rising costs and falling prices. Though they are expected to chalk up near record crops of wheat (73.8 million metric tons) and corn (208 million metric tons) this year, the silo-busting harvests will only push low prices even lower. Since 1975, as farm expenses have nearly doubled (from $75.9 billion to $141.5 billion), net farm income has fallen. Profits, which declined from $32.7 billion in 1979 to $22.9 billion last year, may dip as low as $16 billion this year, making 1982 the third dismal annual showing in a row. Says Thomas Urban, president of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a Des Moines-based seed company: "There is nothing for the farmer to be feeling good about."

This may still be the case despite the White House announcement, three days before the Iowa visit, that the President was extending for one year the grain supply agreement with the Soviet Union that is due to expire this September. Speaking last week to some 5,000 members of the National Corn Growers Association and their guests in Des Moines, assembled in the half-filled Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Reagan proclaimed: "The granary door is open, and the exchange will be cash on the barrelhead."

Despite the predictable applause, Midwest farmers would have much preferred a new, long-term pact with Moscow that would guarantee sales over several years and assure them of a buyer for their bulging surpluses. Reagan's decision clearly left most of them disappointed. The extension permits the Soviet Union to buy a minimum of 6 million tons of corn and wheat, but requires further consultation between Washington and Moscow for a deal of more than 8 million tons. Farmers believe that the U.S. could easily sell Moscow as much as 23 million tons over the next year. The U.S.S.R. has just suffered its fourth bad harvest in a row; the U.S. Agriculture Department estimates that this year's Soviet crop will be a disappointing 170 million metric tons, 68 million tons below the goal. The department also predicts that the Soviets will be forced to import 46 million tons this year, at a cost of $6 billion.