The Look of the Land

THE greens, golds, purples and rich browns had never seemed more luxuriant than this fall. They splashed across the plains and hills in patchwork squares and furrowed curlicues. To harvest their bounty, farmers arose at dawn, gulped down hot breakfasts, climbed onto their great machines and roared onto the fields. Hour after hour they worked, often far into the night. Day after day they labored, until the land was cleared of all but stubble. Then they returned to the fields to prepare them for spring sowing.

These were the sights and the sounds--and the results were spectacular. Despite the shackles of Government control, the American farmer in 1962 has broken through to a new per-acre production record. Kansas wheat ran to an average of 23.5 bu. as against a 1951-60 mark of 19.1. North Dakota wheat yielded 28.7 bu., more than twice last year's, and nearly double the ten-year average. Iowa corn came in at 76 bu. per acre, well above the ten-year average of 57.2. Thanks to modern farm technology, the total harvest was wrought from 288 million acres of cropland--10 million fewer than last year. By 1980, when the U.S. will have 250 million mouths to feed, the farmer will be able to produce all the food and fiber necessary for domestic and export use on only 238 million acres.

The Bounty & the Bureaucracy. Such production is both a blessing and a bane to the U.S. Under the Government's inane farm program, it has saddled the taxpayers with surplus worth $6.5 billion. The maintenance cost alone for this larder runs to better than $2,000,000 a day. Worst of all, the bounty has brought with it a bureaucracy the likes of which the U.S. has never seen before.

When the nation was born, 90% of the population farmed for a living without bureaucratic assistance. In 1838, the House of Representatives failed to pass a modest bill proposing the employment of a clerk to oversee the country's agricultural program. The next year Congress relented, appropriating $1,000 for the "collection of agricultural statistics and for other agricultural purposes." Then, 100 years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill establishing the Department of Agriculture "to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the U.S. useful information on subjects connected with agriculture."

Little did Lincoln know how the department would acquire and diffuse. It has become an army of 111,000 employees with an annual budget of $6.5 billion. On the one hand, Agriculture tries to control production. On the other, it spends millions for research on how to increase production. It issues special publications sufficient to fill a 104-page catalogue. Among the titles: "Influence of Certified Stocks on Spot-Futures Price Relationships for Cotton," "What You Should Know About Leptospirosis," and "Planning a Bathroom." One report is ponderously titled "Human Energy Expenditures as Criteria for Design of Household Storage Facilities." It explains how to design shelf space.

Waterworks & TV. Beneath this vast, smothering blanket is the American farmer--still an individualist. He remains rooted to the earth, bound for good or ill to the wind and the rain, the snow and the sun. He is still conservative, somewhat distrustful of the outsider, does much of his buying by mail, and throws his nickels around as if they were manhole covers. He complains endlessly about his lot, but he would not trade with anyone. He is likely to own a "waterworks" (indoor plumbing), a Deepfreeze, a piano, television and hi-fi sets, and a bank account for his children's education. He hooks a radio onto his tractor to keep up with the news as he plows, joins the P.T.A. and the Chamber of Commerce.

A couple of cases in point:

Les England, his wife Helen and their son and daughter-in-law farm a 520-acre place near Centralia, Mo. (see third color page), and rent another 180 acres near by. Son Frank, 24, and his wife Jane live in a modern pink-and-gray clapboard house built from architect's plans in a farm magazine. The elder Englands occupy a white frame eight-room house just a quarter of a mile away. The Englands raise soybeans, corn, wheat, have 60 head of Herefords, 150 hogs and 41 Appaloosa horses. They have a heavy investment in machinery and rolling stock, including a $9,000 combine, two pickup trucks, a 2 1/2-ton truck and three tractors. Helen England raises German shepherd dogs, earned $2,300 last year, and used part of the money to buy new bedroom furniture. They have an automatic washer and dryer, wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room, vinyl tile in the dining room-kitchen, and a TV set. In the busy spring planting time, Frank often rises at 2 a.m. to get a head start in the fields. A hired hand helps out in the spring, and in summer they take on three high school boys part time. A sign of the times: they buy their milk at the store, because, says Mrs. England, Les "hates to milk cows."

Durum & Ducks. Far away in North Dakota, where the land is flat as a flapjack and rich as Fort Knox, lives the Crockett family, descendants of Davy and just as tough. Bill Crockett and his two married sons Claude and Willard farm 5,000 acres of durum wheat, oats and barley in Cavalier County, just south of the Canadian border. Bill served as North Dakota's speaker of the house in 1935, still takes a lively interest in politics. But his real love, and that of his sons, is the land. Last year alone the three Crockett men spent more than $80,000 for new equipment--but sometimes, just out of sentiment, Bill runs an old-fashioned steam-driven thresher.

Fiercely independent, the Crocketts refuse to go along with voluntary federal crop programs, will not take a cent from the Government. "If I go broke," says Willard, "then I go broke. And if I make money, I'll make money. But I don't want anybody to help me either way. Why, we're making better money than the farmers who depend on the Government." These days, the Crocketts are enraged by a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proposal to buy up 27,000 acres of land in the region for a duck refuge. If the project goes through, some 80 families will have to sell their land and move out. The Crocketts, who refer contemptuously to "them Wildlifers," figure that "people are more important than ducks," have vowed to fight alone if necessary to keep the ducks out. Says Old Bill Crockett: "If they think that the Crocketts stopped fighting when they got old Davy, they've got a surprise coming."

The Crocketts are far from unique in their feeling about Government meddling in their business. Yet despite all the federal controls, the American farmer through his ingenuity and industry keeps raising bigger and better crops. He thereby contributes to the U.S.'s crisis of abundance. Still, in the age of the atom and at a time when famine remains a fact of life to millions, there could be worse crises.

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