Double Your Money

The annual farm-program battle--so vital to farmers, so incomprehensible to everyone else--will be fought this year not on the Hill but on the hustings. President Kennedy made that plain in a remarkably unambitious agricultural message to Congress: in general, he asked for hold-the-line legislation to continue programs already in effect. Under those programs, the taxpayers' 1962 investment in farm surpluses reached $7.7 billion. This was an increase of a mere $95 million over the previous year, a pretty good record in the scandalous history of U.S. farm programs.

Rather than stir up Congress, which in recent years has been increasingly reluctant to subsidize farmers, the Administration is banking on a wheat farmers' referendum coming up late this spring. In that vote the farmers will be given a Hobson's choice between 1) increased Government controls on what they may plant, or 2) doing without Government supports. By this method the Administration hopes to pay more for wheat but get less of it, to reduce production by 150 million bushels. The Government is already stockpiling 1.2 billion bushels of the stuff.

To make certain that the nation's 1,000,000 wheat farmers go for increased controls. Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, who, if for nothing else, must be admired for his diligence, has been tirelessly traveling the country. Over the course of more than 150,000 miles, he has appeared before almost every major and minor farm group, and his message remains the same: "The farmer will be deciding between $1 wheat and $2 wheat."

To win on the referendum Freeman needs a two-thirds yes vote among wheat farmers. His program is still opposed by the American Farm Bureau Federation, biggest of all U.S. agricultural organizations. But Freeman is likely to get his way: after all, while many American farmers talk a good game against Government controls, that double-your-money argument should be pretty persuasive.

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