The Farmer's Side of It!

The Farmer's Side of It!

Has agriculture been profiting unduly at the exepnse of the consumer? A great many people think that is the case, and it is a theory •which has been effectively argued by distinguished economists and others. But there is another side to the coin, and it is well presented by Herschel D. Newsom, Master of the National Grange, in the June issue of Country Gentleman. Mr. Newsom’s article is descriptively entitled, “The Farmer’s Side of It.”

He says frankly, “All of us who live by agriculture must face the brutal fact that if a popularity poll were taken throughout the nation today, the farmer perhaps would get the lowest rating in his-* tory. More than that, he would be accused by many town and city families as a Government-supported gouger who has caused the cost of living to spiral.” He admits that some farm prices are out of line and that there are flaws in the government’s farm program. Then he says, “I want to say that the farmer and his programs are NOT to blame for the high cost of living which worries all of us . . . There is no villian except inflation.”

Agriculture, Mr. Newsom feels, has been made a scapegoat for sins of omission and commission over which it has little or no control. It is true that there has been a very fast rise in the prices of many farm products since the Korean war began. But, he observes, “In the two years before June, 1950, the average of farm prices declined 26 per cent—and this decline, which led almost to the verge of another farm-fed depression, went virtually unnoticed in the city press. Most farm prices have not yet caught up with either wages or prices of industrial goods.”

Mr. Newsom implements this statement with some impressive statistics. The average of farm prices still is almost 15 per cent below 1947 — by contrast, both corporate profits and hourly wages of factory workers are 18 per cent above that level. In 1947, he says, net farm income was $18,000,000,000. In 1949 it was $14,000,000,000, and in 1950 it was.down still more to $13,000,000,000. He writes, “Last year the 20 per cent of the U.S. population that lives on the farms received only 12 per cent of the national income.”

Mr. Newsom is the first to admit that serious mistakes have been made in the price-support program —such as the potato-support fiasco which stirred up so much bitter criticism some time ago, But, as a general rule, hfe writes, “those supports have helped to hold food prices down.” Here his reasoning runs like this: government purchases have taken surplus products from the market at times of unreasonably low prices. These surpluses have been held in reserve, and have been fed back into the market when prices threatened to go unreasonably high. As a consequence, he says, “Consumers have benefited as much or more than farmers from most of these programs.”

Finally, Mr. Newsom feels that inflation must be fought hard on