To Cope with the Farm Mess

Nixon and Kennedy agree that the farm mess is the U.S.'s No. 1 domestic problem in Election Year 1960--and well they might, since federal farm programs cost the taxpayers some $6 billion a year and still fail to keep farm income from drooping. Last week at a farm near Sioux Falls, S.Dak., the two candidates presented their programs for tidying up the mess--and, incidentally, bid high for the wavering farm-state vote. Occasion: the National Plowing Contest, an annual jamboree held in a different farm state each year.

Kennedy ran into foul weather. The rain that had turned the fields into a sea of sticky mud started up again just as he began to speak. Said he, looking down at some 20,000 damp faces: "I regret the rain, but it rains, as the Bible tells us. on the just and the unjust alike, on Republicans as well as Democrats." He was right: when Nixon spoke from the same platform next day, it rained again, though not until near the end of the speech (South Dakota is traditionally Republican territory). A week before, at Guthrie Center, Iowa, Nixon had laid out the first half of his farm program, "Operation Consume," designed to shrink present farm surpluses by increasing consumption of farm products (TIME, Sept. 26). At Sioux Falls he unwrapped the second half, "Operation Safeguard," designed to forestall future buildups of surpluses.

More Giveaways. When they get down to comparing the Nixon and Kennedy programs point by point, U.S. farmers are likely to be struck by the numerous similarities. Both candidates called for:

P: More and bigger federal programs to give away surplus foodstuffs. Both stressed overseas "Food for Peace" programs. Kennedy, in addition, urged more food giveaways at home through an enlarged school-lunch program and a food-stamp plan for needy families.

P: Vocational training to help marginal farmers earn their livings, or at least supplement their farm incomes, in industrial jobs.

P: Expansion of various federal services to farmers, including farm credit and help for farm cooperatives.

P: A bigger voice for farmers in federal farm programs. Kennedy said that the "soil conservation" program should be "administered at the local level by local farmers.'' Nixon promised to set up a farmer council to "advise the President on farm programs."

But with all their points of agreement, Nixon and Kennedy took widely different approaches to the basic farm problem of price-depressing surpluses. Putting greater stress than Kennedy on increasing consumption, Nixon called for a "crash agricultural-research program" to find "new industrial and other uses for our farm products." In Operation Consume, drawing on the old more meat, less bread approach to the surplus problem, Nixon had urged a program for converting surplus grains into protein foods. Under this program, farmers would get grain from the Government to feed to livestock and poultry; the meat, milk and eggs produced would be channeled into foreign and domestic giveaway programs. The farmer would get his compensation in additional surplus grain, to sell or use as he saw fit.

To "safeguard" against future surpluses, Nixon's program would rely heavily on a proposal that New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller urged back in late 1959: greatly expanding the "conservation reserve" (land taken out of crop production and planted to grass or trees). During a "transition period," while Operation Consume plus the expanded conservation reserve gradually cut back surpluses, Nixon would use a combination of price supports and acreage controls to cope with major problem crops such as wheat--a Democratic-style program of the type that Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson opposes.* But once markets for farm products "achieve a new buoyancy," Nixon would shift to a Benson-style support program with no production controls, and support levels "based on the average of market prices over the immediately preceding crop years."

Bureaucrat's Dream. The program that Kennedy unveiled at the plowing contest was more original than Nixon's, but also more gimmicky. Kennedy offered the farmers something new, "parity of income" (not to be confused with price "parity," basis of much farm legislation now on the books, and a hot one that both candidates avoided). The concept was "clear," Kennedy insisted, but the way he defined it, parity of income sounded like a mathematician's nightmare and a bureaucrat's dream. "Parity of income," he said, "is that income which gives average producers a return on their invested capital, labor and management equal to that which similar or comparable resources earn in nonfarm employment." It would be achieved through "supply management," another new phrase, meaning a mixture of "land retirement" and marketing quotas. The quota system would involve much more Government control than any of Nixon's proposals: every wheat farmer, for example, would get a federal certificate entitling him to market a specified quota based on his "historical record of production." To get a marketing certificate, a farmer "would be required to retire a small fixed percentage of his wheat acreage."

Neither Nixon nor Kennedy drew more than polite applause: farmers have become used to hearing politicians' farm speeches with skeptical impassivity. The one thing clear from both speeches was that America's bountifulness would continue to cost the U.S. taxpayers plenty.

* Only recently returned from Europe, dogged Secretary Benson is scheduled to set off in mid-October on a tour of South America, in a sort of exile from the presidential campaign.

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