Farmer's Friend

"We don't say 'swine'; we say 'hogs,' " explained the editor. "We don't say 'not intended for human consumption'; we say 'not fit to eat.' We try to remember that we're telling a story to a man who doesn't have much time to read and no big library handy to look up the odd words."

So well does Editor Carroll Streeter's monthly, 82-year-old Farm Journal follow that formula--telling down-to-earth stories in down-to-earth prose--that it has achieved an audience concentration unmatched by any other major specialized magazine; with a circulation of 3,119,366, the Farm Journal is read by fully half the nation's farmers.

Thinking Boy's Filter. This week, plump with ads and solid with facts, the four regional editions of the Farm Journal dropped heavily into country mailboxes across the land. "Hold wool for higher prices," it briskly warned. "Finish selling wheat. Prices are at their peak." As always, the features were gingham-crisp; "New Pay-Offs with Plastic Mulch," "How to Sell Bulls for 30% More," and "Need Bees? Make a Bed for 'Em." The farmer's wife got a new recipe for Danish raspberry pie, and the farmer's daughter learned that if she had light brown hair she should use clear red or red-orange lipstick. For the small fry, the Farm Journal ran plans of a hobbyhorse with a body fashioned from the oil filter of a tractor.

Editing such copy, the Farm Journal's Streeter is as much farmer as newsman. He grew up on a South Dakota livestock ranch, graduated with a degree in agriculture from Iowa State College in 1923. After college, he caught on with the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette as its first farm editor, spent days skidding down muddy roads to dig out stories in long, back-fence chats with farmers. Says he: "When you're looking for news, there's nothing that beats getting out yourself and talking to sources."

Kitchen Talk. The Farm Journal does its energetic best to cultivate its sources. Nine regional editors spend most of their time prowling about farms, Government stations and university "Ag" departments. On a recent trip, Dean Wolf, one of the magazine's three Midwestern editors, stumbled across three major items for his futures list in one day: a tractor rig that on one trip plowed, spread fertilizer, pulled a harrow and spread insecticide; an experiment that took piglets from their mothers by surgery and raised them in disease-free surroundings; and an operating "pig factory" which successfully used new techniques (TIME, March 9) to raise pigs in one building from birth to marketing day.

In addition to his regular regional coverage, the Farm Journal's Streeter urges his home-office staff of 15 farm-savvy editors ("the best that money can lure and scouting can turn up--men and women with missionary spirit, who are anxious to help improve life on the farms") to play hooky from the magazine's comfortable building in downtown Philadelphia and roam the country. Streeter himself still likes to drop in unannounced on a farmer, politely decline the invitation into the parlor, and spend hours in the kitchen talking crops.

The Great Crusade. To turn readers into news sources, the Farm Journal runs three separate letters columns in each issue, often finds ideas for features in the morning mail. Particularly fruitful is a special section called "The Farmer's Wife," the vigorous vestige of the magazine Farmer's Wife, which was bought by the Farm Journal in 1939. Under pert Editor Gertrude Dieken, who was raised on an Iowa farm, the section has its own inside cover, draws up to 1,500 letters a month, most of them written as though to a close friend.

Apart from its mission of feeding facts to farmers, the Journal is a tireless, effective crusader on issues great and small. In 1953, within six months after the magazine had demanded, "Let's Make 'Em Cook Raw Garbage" (to kill the vesicular exanthema virus that can infect hogs), 28 states enacted appropriate laws. Currently, Editor Streeter is busily engaged in a crusade in which the stakes are no less than the future of the American farmer, afflicted as he is by a self-defeating Government program that this fiscal year is costing the U.S. taxpayer a scandalous $5.4 billion. Stabbing out articles with two fingers on his typewriter, Streeter calls for a gradual reduction of the Government's subsidy program, an increase in vigorous, quality-conscious farmer-cooperatives to the point where they can influence prices. Says Carroll Streeter, invoking the same rugged independence that has made the Farm Journal prosper: "What we want for the farmer is less support in return for more freedom."

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