Throughout the Grain Belt, abandoned farmhouses were burned to the ground, cleared, and incorporated into ever-larger corn and soy fields. In order to profitably mass-produce convenience fare for a growing middle class, the food industry needed unchecked access to cheap inputs. BY TAKA YAMAGUCHI In 1976, then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz coined the now infamous phrase, "food is a weapon.". Before this incident, it was not at all unusual for respectable white people to tell and laugh at jokes that portrayed black men as lazy, shiftless, and priapic. Subsidized foods became less expensive, yet were higher in energy than unsubsidized crops such as fruits and vegetables, so Americans were financially inclined to purchase them. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy. 0000068736 00000 n By that time, farms were cranking out much more than the market could bear, and prices fell accordingly. A Short History of Agricultural Adjustment, 1933-1975. National Agricultural Library Digital Collections. For a few years, those actions seemed like a good business decision. 0000008682 00000 n Until the 1920s, agricultural policy targeted territorial expansion, and as farms thrived, the relationship between rural and urban markets fostered the growth of American cities. Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, died this weekend at 98, leaving a colorfully offensive legacy and, thanks to the political correctness of the mainstream news media, a bit of a mystery as to why he's passed with such ignominy. "Federal Farm Policies Hit". Wallace would have seen these as the glory of his department.. We believe in widespread ownership of businesses and farmland. The Secretary tells American farmers that high price guarantees, or supports, would lead you backward to the days when Government controls dictated what you planted and how much, and in the long run, lead to overproduction. 0000060947 00000 n Earl Butz. Feb. 3, 2008 12 AM PT. Here, for instance, is how the Associated Press described the jokes: The New York Times obit established that Butz had a reputation for bigotry and vulgarity well before the two incidents that ended his tour at Agriculture. Produce all you can, and well the sell the surplus overseas! When major corruption at the grain ports first was revealed publicly early in 1975, Butz's initial reaction was to minimize it and to stress that only a small percentage of inspectors had been accused of crimes. 0000071933 00000 n Blocked by White House budget officials and by President Ford's uncompromising stance against further Government regulation of business, Butz tried to patch up the graininspection system by adding more Federal supervisors. 5In 1832, under Chief Justice John Marshall, the Supreme Court promoted tribal sovereignty, which recognized Native American tribes as domestic dependent nations. The court asserted in Worcester v. Georgia, Indian Nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining their original and natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil. 6The Marshall Courts opinions were overlooked in nearly all forms of territorial expansion (most notably by the Jackson Administrations Trail of Tears), including future land policy such as Lincolns Homestead Act of 1862 that continued to promote the growth of agriculture. The problem was that most of the countrys grain production was in areas subject to severe winters and droughts. 0000045147 00000 n They are making money nowand it was Butz who was there when the going got good. 0000005254 00000 n After Butzwell, the jokes about gays limped along for awhile, but it finally sank in that racism and anti-Semitism would seldom be tolerated, even in private. citation-type="booksimple" This became evident during the Great Depression through the need to move away from expansion policy, and later in the 1970s when Nixon and Butz sought to reduce food prices. . He also came up with a weakly worded proposal to Congress to strengthen criminal penalties and minimize conflict of interest in inspection agencies, some of which had been owned by the same grain firms whose products they inspected. It reduces the need to rely on other countries for corn production. 0000011491 00000 n The artificial prices implemented by the government masked the problems of overproduction that threatened food prices and the agricultural system as a whole. 0000054304 00000 n But he endured personal humiliation along the way. Your support keeps our unbiased, nonprofit news free. 19Dubbed the Great Grain Robbery, food prices in America soared. 0000059437 00000 n And during his tenure he has played a leading policy role in the decisions which sent a disproportionate share of FoodforPeace aid to rightwing governments, including those of South Korea, South VietCambodia and Chile. You haven't learned to punch the clock at 40 hours or put two farmers in the tractor tab like the locomotive that goes through town. 0000044995 00000 n 0000051916 00000 n Expansion efforts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in western migration that led to agricultural prosperity in rural areas. On the one hand, the high production can lead to big surpluses and big drops in farm prices. 0000009335 00000 n 0000042749 00000 n His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs. Jesse Jackson learned the latter lesson in 1984 when a black reporter for the Washington Post passed along to another reporter the news that hed heard Jackson refer to Jews in private as Hymie, and refer to New York City as Hymietown.. Those farmers were early believers. [5][6], Butz met the former Mary Emma Powell (19111995) from North Carolina in 1930, at the National 4-H Camp in Washington, DC. 25 The rise of factory farms that grew specialized crops subsidized by the government presented environmental troubles as well. 10.How . 0000062275 00000 n Documents From the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 . American Memory from the Library of Congress . 0000055830 00000 n You're working for yourselves, because you're trying to make a little money and save some of it. The 12,500 members of the American Farm Bureau Federation to whom he addressed those remarks recently in Indianapolis roared their approval. For Butz and his agribusiness cronies, the program amounted to socialism an intolerable check on farmers ability to plant and harvest as much as possible. Some world food organizations are concerned, not only because of American fuzziness at Rome but also because of the tendency of the United States to sign longterm supply agreements with people who pay cash for grain. x|kQO$c*M3Sj 0000061409 00000 n Butz attempted to end. 0000000016 00000 n After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. [29] He is buried at the Tippecanoe Memory Gardens in West Lafayette, Indiana. In 1973, he reduced the number of acres set aside or taken out of grain production from 25 million acres in 1972 to 7.4 million acres in 73. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Industrial agriculture lost one of its greatest champions last week: Earl Rusty Butz, secretary of the USDA under Nixon. But by regulating supply and demand, reduction efforts restored the prices of agricultural commodities to those of the early twentieth century. Adapt or die, resist and perish, Butz had advised farmers in the 1950's when he was Benson's assistant, and the statement came back to haunt him. Dean reports that this was Butz's response: I'll tell you what the coloreds want. . 12The Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, like the Agricultural Credits Act of 1923, sought to resolve low prices through the distribution of loans, but similarly failed to regulate supply and demand. Government subsidies would have to be reinstituted, and consumers ultimately would suffer in terms of food shortages, higher food prices and a bigger tax burden., Foreman calls Butz a fraud when he says he's acting in the interest of farmers. All but 30 days of the term were suspended. 0000041223 00000 n Dr. Earl L. Butz, educator, administrator, and government official was born on July 3, 1909 to Harmon Lee Butz and Ada Tillie Lower in Albion, Indiana. 0000056798 00000 n BJW -WYFW(.V*(T[)&(?`".\xc;; 0000064407 00000 n support in the Midwest. "[11] A spokesman for Cardinal Cooke of the New York archdiocese demanded an apology, and the White House[11] requested that he apologize. Butzs great policy change had given rise to the deepest rural crisis since the Depression. The program that Butz inherited worked like this: When farmers began to produce too much and prices began to fall, the government would pay farmers to leave some land fallow, with the goal of pushing prices up the following season. The Butz farm policy is one that involves risk. [26][27], On May 22, 1981, Butz pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges for having under-reported income he earned in 1978. 0000064816 00000 n Rather, this reader says, Butz was making a coarse and simpleminded joke about the popes own celibacy. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Earl L. Butz, Self: King Corn. [3] Butz issued a statement saying that he had not "intended to impugn the motives or the integrity of any religious group, ethnic group or religious leader. 1. 0000029154 00000 n He believed that a free, global market would bring higher prices, and for the few years that Russian agriculture struggled, he was right. Nixons response culminated in the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973, which Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz called an historic turning point in the philosophy of farm programs in the United States. 22Better known as the 1973 farm bill, the act ceased to pay farmers to plant their land in accordance to supply and demand, and began subsidizing crops by the bushel to reward production. Reading Eagle . They had two sons, William Powell and Thomas Earl Butz.[4]. Earl Butz, who was born 105 years ago today, was one of the worst US government officials ever.He was Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinets of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. 2. ' , See the article in its original context from. 0000052349 00000 n Earl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture during the 1970s but came to be remembered more for a vulgar racial comment that brought about. A Cullman, Ala., contract grower whose attempt to organize poultry farmers was crushed by the processors (with some assistance, he charges, from the Agriculture Department) refers to his neighbors as the last slaves in America. Economic studies indicate that poultry farmers are kept in virtual bondage, forced into everincreasing debt as a condition for receiving each new contract from the processors, then working long days raising tens of thousands of companyowned chickens for pennies an hour. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Earl L. Butz 0000058679 00000 n He was 98. Millions of hogs, cattle and chicken were sold for slaughter as producers reduced their inventories. Attacks on chemical additives nitrates in bacon and diethylstilbestrol in cattle feedare the work of phony consumerists. Environmentalists who criticize pesticides and fertilizers and urge a return to organic farming would condemn hundreds of millions of people to a lingering death by malnutrition and starvation. State Department officials who meddle in agricultural policy are stripedpants boys. And Congressmen who say food prices are too high are demagogues. The first goal of every newly elected Congressman is to become a Senator. Broken Heartland: The Rise of Americas Rural Ghetto, Enterprise and other rental companies move into car-share market, Hawaii quietly rolls back innovative plan to manage marine resources, A major dairy company plans to slash methane emissions but theres an elephant in the room, What 5,000-year-old skeletons tell us about living with climate change, England finally joins Europe in banning single-use plastic foodware, Why North Dakota is preparing to sue Minnesota over clean energy, Justice Department sues major polluter in Louisianas Cancer Alley, Study: Extreme heat is driving deaths in US prisons, Walmart, Target, Home Depot lead pack of retailers emitting millions of pounds of CO2 through shipping. At the time, Butz served as a board member for several agribiz firms, including Ralston Purina, then a sprawling food conglomerate. Assuming the readers interpretation is correct, Butzs pope jibe was at the very least a much nastier and more personal insult than I realized.]. Farm income stayed high for most of the decade. [4] They were married on December 22, 1937. 0000066862 00000 n The "Great Grain Robbery" was not really a robbery, but it was a major turning point in the history of agricultural monitoring.. Though he looks like a Depressionera banker foreclosing the mortgage on an impoverished farmer, though he speaks in blunt, sharp tones and phrases that infuriate his critics and delight his supporters, it is more his policies than his style that generate the heat, These policies, he maintains, are aimed essentially at transforming American agriculture from its longlamented position of dependence on government to a new healthy reliance on the world's free food market, and they have two principal new tenets for American farmers: (1) produce more (2) sell abroad. Keep up with history and join our newsletter. They are disturbed, too, by the continued exchange of top personnel between the department and the big grain companies. 0000046621 00000 n Butz had a similar view, "Get big or get out." Butz believed farm consolidation was inevitable. The successes and failures of each installation of land and agricultural policy emphasize the understated influence each wave of policy has extended over American welfare. They include the discovery of inorganic chemical inputs, mechanization, specialization . Ulrike Butz, daughter of television presenter Hermann Butz, grew up in the Bavarian district of Miesbach. Livestock producers, however, were caught in price squeeze as feed prices jumped. 0000042235 00000 n But the ag policies of the day encouraged restraint. The smarter ones were even learning, albeit more slowly, not to believe such things. To ensure bountiful food for the home front and the devastated allied nations, the government implemented price supports on crops. He took off the restriction that farms had stating what they could and could not produce . A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz Industrial agriculture lost one of its greatest champions last week: Earl "Rusty" Butz, secretary of the USDA under. 0000052562 00000 n An agricultural hot line to Washington was established by the Agriculture Council of America, and thousands of calls poured in to farm leaders and Congressmen manning the phones. But over the years not unlike his political patron, Nixon he returned to respectability. 0000050347 00000 n With the grain reserve hollowed out and the drought impeding the 1973 harvest, grain prices jumped and farmers scrambled to plant as much as they could to take advantage. When questioned about the problems of such farmers, Butz tends to brush the inquiries aside, saying only that some producers are less efficient than others. Rather than use federal policy as a check on farm output, Butz saw it as a lever to maximize output. 0000041388 00000 n Let Them Eat Ketchup In, Roberts, Paul. 0000029636 00000 n 0000050730 00000 n 0000069937 00000 n He is fond of the disparaging statement; he likes to question the political motives of those who disagree with him. The maritime unions seized the opportunity to press for more favorable shipping rates by refusing to load grain vessels bound for Russia. But if the two stay in balance, if the production is matched by just the right amount of foreign sales and there is enough left over for the domestic market, then farmers will get a good income, consumers won't pay inflated prices and the nation gets some help on its balance of payments problems. 3By the end of the nineteenth century, agricultural policy contributed to the settlement of 80 million acres of farmland. By artificially increasing demand for food, food production became more efficient and drove down the cost of food for everyone. 0000052132 00000 n In lean years say, when drought struck the government would release some of that stored grain, mitigating sudden price hikes. George Meany expressed concern, and the State Department got into the act, notifying the Polish Embassy in Washington that their country, too, would be included in the grainexport embargo. the World Food Crisis of the early 1970s gave Butz the chance to promote the false notion that free markets would be good for farmers. 0000051120 00000 n In addition, consumer food prices jumped. Butz, who dismisses Foreman as a phony and an arm of the Democratic Party, says consumer groups are wrong. 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