"Moral Right"

"MR. FARMER-- Sell your corn to the Government for $1.48; store it right on your farm ; then buy your corn to feed for 65-c-."

When this ad by a corncrib manufacturer appeared in a country newspaper, the Farm Quarterly figured that many farmers would ask: "Can I really get away with that?" In its spring issue last week, the Quarterly assured U.S. farmers that the ad had suggested a perfectly legal way for farmers to sell their corn and have it too--and make as much as 83-c- a bushel into the bargain.

The Quarterly cited the case of a Jefferson County (Ind.) farmer who normally uses all of his corn for feed. He had such a bumper crop in 1948 that he cribbed his 904-bushel surplus, put it under Government seal in 1949 and got a $1,319 loan at the $1.47-a-bushel support price less charges. Then a neighbor told him he was a fool: he could put his entire crop under loan at the support price, then buy all the corn he needed for feed at 65 1/2 a bushel in the cash market. In short, by selling all of his own corn to the Government and buying in the open market what he needed for feed, the farmer could make an extra 50-c- to 80-c- on every bushel fed to his pigs and chickens.

The farmer then asked his local Department of Agriculture agent more about it. "He told me that I would be within my legal and moral rights to do this," said the farmer. "By keeping all my own corn off the market and buying corn [on the market], I would be building up the price, which was just what the whole program was designed to do."

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