2. His only real friends are the big farmers, and, if this summer's expected bumper crop on the Great Plains affects their income as some anticipate, he may soon lose them, too. At that time, the Russian grain purchase of 1972 was the largest grain deal between two nations in history, and it set in motion a host of changes that would dominate agricultural history for at least the next two decades. 0000022228 00000 n What did Ian and Curtis purchase to inject into the soil? He wouldn't embarrass a Cabinet member. In addition, consumer food prices jumped. 0000059164 00000 n D. in agricultural economics (1937) from Purdue University. 0000056620 00000 n http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0297_0001_ZS.html, Markham, Jerry W.. New Economic Policy and New York City. In, Levine, Susan. 0000005254 00000 n 1976-1977. https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/13/archives/why-they-love-earl-butz-prosperous-farmers-see-him-as-the-greatest.html. 0000062275 00000 n http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/bdsdcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(bdsdcc, Dimitri, Carolyn, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin. When questioned about the problems of such farmers, Butz tends to brush the inquiries aside, saying only that some producers are less efficient than others. He first came out for abolishing private inspection agencies and turning over all inspection to a new Federalstate system. 0000069351 00000 n 0000043465 00000 n 0000071060 00000 n Livestock producers, however, were caught in price squeeze as feed prices jumped. Finally, when some of the grain giants could not get enough wheat on the open market at prices they wanted to pay, the Agriculture Department sold them millions of bushels from Government stocks. In terms of 2009 dollars, corn reached the equivalent of over $15 in 1973.Overall farm income jumped along with grain prices, from $2.3 billion in 1972 to $19.6 billion in 73. The deal came at the same time as the Nixon administration was trying to ease tensions between the worlds two super powers (at that time) and to bolster U.S. farm income to help win that years presidential election. The October 18, 1976, issue of Time reported the comment while obscuring its vulgarity:[13]. I tried to interview him last fall for Grists Sow What? Butz tells farmers that consumers are mad at them because of high retail food prices. 0000054849 00000 n Nixons response culminated in the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973, which Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz called an historic turning point in the philosophy of farm programs in the United States. 22Better known as the 1973 farm bill, the act ceased to pay farmers to plant their land in accordance to supply and demand, and began subsidizing crops by the bushel to reward production. The Agriculture Department is estimating that grain production will roach 255 million tons, 13 million more than last year's. Earl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture during the 1970s but came to be remembered more for a vulgar racial comment that brought about. What policy did he promote in 1973? The United States now has commitments to supply about 25 million tons a year to the Soviet Union, Poland, Rumania, Japan and Israel. Pros Of Corn Subsidy. A publication of Hillsdale College Over 6,200,000 Readers Recent Posts These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm. No. It gives farmers access to consistent income. Current agricultural policy has proved this as well, as America can no longer sustain the health and environmental implications of subsidy fueled factory farms. 0000043106 00000 n 0000063920 00000 n 0000009293 00000 n Earl Butz Ford was warm and friendly. 0000068371 00000 n No, I try not to be a negative thinker. Your support keeps our unbiased, nonprofit news free. The dust bowl was a fresh memory. Heather H. (October 23, 1973). 0000052132 00000 n In Omaha, President Ford campaigned with Butz at his side and told a farm audience: I'd hate to see a good team broken up in the middle of the game. Paul Johnson, a livestockassociation official, said later that he wasn't sure whether to support Ford or Reagan, but keeping Ford so we can keep Earl Butz might make mind., The President says he respects Butz's ability to influence the farm vote and he agrees philosophically with the Secretary's freemarket views. In 1973, Nixon's agricultural secretary, Earl Butz, oversaw a change in the philosophy of the U.S. farm program. But the man likes confrontation, and uses it to disarm his critics. After the 1973 farm bill, Americans spent a lower percentage of their income on food than ever before, purchasing more calories for less money, a trend that adversely impacted the nations diet. 0000029636 00000 n 0000042749 00000 n Surviving farms responded to low prices by planting more, hoping to make up on volume what they were losing on price. He surely loved the way the biofuel boom has farmers worldwide scrambling to plant corn and soy and drench the earth with agrichemicals. Butz was born in Albion, Indiana, and brought up on a dairy farm in Noble County, Indiana. He does acknowledge, however, that his policy will work only if the United States remains grain exporter to the world. Donate today tohelp keep Grists site and newsletters free. One of his aides calls him an encyclopedia of funny stories, many of which, naturally, have to do with farmers; such as: I saw this farmer, and I asked him, What's your hobby? He said, Farming. I said, What would you do if you inherited a million dollars? He said, I'd keep on farming as long as the money lasted. His jokes have occasionally gotten him into troublelike the one in which he ridiculed the Pope's stand against artificial birth control by saying: He no playa da game; he no makea da rules. The remark brought a storm of protest from Catholics and ItalianAmericans, and resulted in one of Butz's rare apologies. [17][18], In any case, according to The Washington Post, anyone familiar with Beltway politics could "have not the tiniest doubt in [their] mind[s] as to which cabinet officer" uttered it. Our productive capacity so far exceeds our capacity to consume, he says, that we couldn't even eat all the wheat we grow if it were free. But increasing U. S. exports has taken a certain wheeling and dealing. Butz had a similar view, "Get big or get out." Butz believed farm consolidation was inevitable. Then, in the 1980s, the bubble burst. He had argued the issue before the White House Food Policy Group, then chaired by Kissinger, and thought he had converted everyone. Butz should be praying for drought right now, says one observer. Ford discusses many of the painful decisions he had to make during his presidencyincluding the firing of Earl Butz. Dr. Butz graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. 0000042932 00000 n With his closely cropped gray hair and self-assured drawl, Earl Butz was the spitting image of a Southern patrician. Yet the food-production machine Butz created kept cranking. 10.How . 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. 0000070292 00000 n American President: James Monroe: The American Franchise. The University of Virginia. But you've got to make choices, and you're not going to be right all the time. Last year, they harvested 1.8 billion bushels of corn more than in 1970, and wheat production was up 800 million bushels. 0000048080 00000 n The program that Butz inherited worked like this: When farmers began to produce too much and prices began to fall, the government would pay farmers to leave some land fallow, with the goal of pushing prices up the following season. Butz and . Exports sustained high grain prices, leading the United States Department of Agriculture to describe the years between 1910 and 1914 as the golden age of farming. Blocked by White House budget officials and by President Ford's uncompromising stance against further Government regulation of business, Butz tried to patch up the graininspection system by adding more Federal supervisors. Eating for Strength . In, Pollan, Michael. 0000051337 00000 n 0000041223 00000 n "His policies favored large-scale corporate farming" which has damaged the family farm to this day, and arguably "led directly to overproduction of corn and a subsequent rise of obesity in the United . Meanwhile, interest rates had spiked, making all of those loans farmers had taken out in the 70s into a paralyzing burden. [29] He is buried at the Tippecanoe Memory Gardens in West Lafayette, Indiana. Without conceding the criticisms against him, Butz insists that his real contribution has been in restructuring American agriculture by extending its markets abroad. Earl Butz (1909-2008) American government official (1909-2008) - Earl Butz was born in Albion (town in Noble County, Indiana, USA) on July 3rd, 1909 and died in Washington, D.C. (capital city of the United States) on February 2nd, 2008 at the age of 98. Argued Nov. 7, 1977. . 0000067068 00000 n 0000048818 00000 n In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Butz as Secretary of Agriculture, a position in which he continued to serve after Nixon resigned in 1974 as the result of the Watergate scandal. YouTube. Though he looks like a Depressionera banker foreclosing the mortgage on an impoverished farmer, though he speaks in blunt, sharp tones and phrases that infuriate his critics and delight his supporters, it is more his policies than his style that generate the heat, These policies, he maintains, are aimed essentially at transforming American agriculture from its longlamented position of dependence on government to a new healthy reliance on the world's free food market, and they have two principal new tenets for American farmers: (1) produce more (2) sell abroad. " Earl Butz 3. 0000058194 00000 n Butz has been saved twice, by dry weather and by the Russians, said Representative Neal Smith, a Democrat from Iowa, referring to droughts in the American corn belt in 1974 and 1975 and to Soviet purchases of 16.5 million tons of grain from last year's crop and 2.2 million tons from the 1976 harvest. Though many experts say he's whistling in the dark, he is predicting that bumper crops will be absorbed. His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs. citation-type="booksimple" 0000018904 00000 n Five years later, he pled guilty to tax evasion and served a short stint in jail. Changes in farming supported by government policy especially over the last century have incentivized farmers to grow crops that are easy to ship, store, and processnamely cereal grains and sweetenersensuring these foods are inexpensive and widely available. Butz's motto became "get big or get out," encouraging the growth of corporate factory-farms and increasing subsidised production of staples for export. Plant fence row to fence row, he exhorted from his bully pulpit. He exhorted farmers to ``plant fence row to fence row'' to meet global demand, helping to drive down surging food costs. Grist is powered by WordPress VIP. It must have been satisfying for Butz to watch his vision come to life. In other words, plow up and plant every bit of land you can get your tractor on. That same year, he was also named chairman of the United States delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 0000044297 00000 n The greatest source of unhappiness to Butz is the high percentage of the Agriculture Department taken up by food stamps school lunches, and other trition and social programs. 0000009251 00000 n And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. He was also fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $61,183 in civil penalties. Earl Lauer Butz was born near Albion, Indiana, on July 3, 1909. 0000029778 00000 n High Agriculture Department officials began refusing to answer questions relating to grain sales to Russia and to Eastern European countries, saying sareastically that the diplomats had taken over. The outrage over Butzs joke was, of course, entirely appropriate. BY TAKA YAMAGUCHI In 1976, then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz coined the now infamous phrase, "food is a weapon.". So if youre tempted to feel sorry for the guy for getting torn up by historical forces he never understood, give it a rest. 0000043800 00000 n It was a crude joke that turned Butz into a household word and punch line on Johnny Carson's ``Tonight'' show. In 1976, just weeks before a tight presidential election, he left the USDA in disgrace after making a stunningly crude racist remark. Written by Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. He's a spokesman for the big corporate farmers, for the food processors and for the grocery people. I went to Syria. Nixon plucked Butz out of Purdues agriculture department and planted him in the USDA in 1971. 0000059949 00000 n Agricultural policy has supported Americas greatest triumphs. [16], The reference in Time was to John Dean's article published in Rolling Stone issue #223. trailer Although not featured prominently in history books, American land and agricultural policy laid the groundwork for the countrys geographic, political, and economic development. Anyone can read what you share. 0000042400 00000 n 0000044615 00000 n 0000010104 00000 n It took a while to convert President Ford and Butz's remarks about that are revealing of the manner of this man who has become the nation's top agriculture policy maker: I told the President that a year ago we had the whole Midwest in the palm of our hand and we piddled it away with interference with grain exports. At his death, Butz was the oldest living former Cabinet member from any administration.[30][31]. [14][15] Coincidentally, Butz' resignation was announced on Barbara Walters' first day as the first female co-anchor of the ABC Evening News. 0000053931 00000 n So do other prosperous farmers and the agribusiness complex of corporate fruit and vegetable raisers, food processors and distributors. 0000063693 00000 n "[11] Through a spokesman, he stated that media outlets had taken this portion of his statement out of their original context, which was that of retelling a joke. It's true that if we suddenly stopped exports, food prices would fall, he says, but with falling prices paid to farmers, production the next year would be cut back. Throughout the Grain Belt, abandoned farmhouses were burned to the ground, cleared, and incorporated into ever-larger corn and soy fields. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Before Butz, there remained a snickering tolerance among the powerful for jokes denigrating the humanity of blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. The policy of prohibiting permanent roads and of restricting commercial logging in accordance with the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act was continued. If the Secretary is wrong, of course, and this summer's expected surplus cannot be disposed of, then the farmers income could fall drastically. He emphasizes that the flight from the farms to the cities has slowed down during his reign; that the decrease of 11,000 farm units in 1975 is well below the annual decrease of more than 95,000 before 1969. 0000063118 00000 n ammonia grow corn faster 4x as much tractors made the farmers work easier and let them farm more land. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. Farm incomes plunged and tens of thousands of farms went under. 19Dubbed the Great Grain Robbery, food prices in America soared. In 1970, the Government was paying farmers $3.7 billion in subsidies, mostly as an incentive not to plant. ), The feisty Earl Butz is now being drawn into Presidentialcampaign warfate as he was in 1972, when ??? America's total grain production of 242 million tons in 1975 represented an increase of 81 million tons from what it was in 1961. ' , See the article in its original context from. Left unregulated, agricultural policy has proved to be as catastrophic as well as instrumental culturally, economically, and environmentally. A mere five years earlier, Nixon himself had been recorded in the Oval Office telling Donald Rumsfeld, Most of them, basically, are just out of the trees. 0000069545 00000 n He received a bachelor of science degree in agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in agricultural economics in 1937. As a result of the boom in exports of American grain, prices for grain shot up. On the one hand, the high production can lead to big surpluses and big drops in farm prices. In 1954, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Agriculture by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. Butz decided that America could sell them 10 million tons right away, then embargo further shipments but possibly resume them in September after the effects of this country's drought could he more accurately gauged. A side goal was to go easy on the land. How did Earl Buts (secretary of Ag) change the farm policy in 1973? Butz resigned his cabinet post on October 4, 1976. 0000008903 00000 n Design and build by Upstatement. 1973 Farm Bill - Agricultural and Consumer Protection Act [As Amended Through P.L. He graduated from Purdue University in West Lafayette in 1932. There was some question whether or not Butz realized that the Soviets were buying up one quarter of the entire U.S. wheat crop, but he did nothing to stop the sale despite the fact that it eventually raised food prices. The policy sometimes paid farmers to not grow food in order to keep agricultural prices high and allow small farms to survive. Although Butz publicly emphasizes that the United States cannot and should not use what he, at the same time, frankly calls agripower as a weapon, he is fond of noting that Rumanian Agriculture Minister Miculescu once told him: You've got a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb: you've got soybeans. Butz took two days off from chairing the Rome World Food Conference two years ago and went to Cairo with a little wheat in my pocket They had the red carpet out for me there. Secretary of Agriculture by extending its markets abroad climate and justice its markets abroad into ever-larger and. 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