GET THOSE BOYS OFF THE FARM! - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 5

Committee for Tax Reduction, endorsed by Kennedy, which actively lobbied Congress, eventually result-
ing in the passage of legislation in 1964 cutting individual tax rates by 20 percent across the board and
reducing corporate tax rates.
CED members viewed the organization as a merchant of ideas. Its leadership had strong media connec-
tions that enabled it to publicize and popularize policy recommendations with elected officials and the pub-
lic. Its information committee included members of several advertising agencies, the editors of the Atlanta
Constitution and Look , the publisher of the Washington Post , the head of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the
board chairman of Curtis Publishing, and the presidents of Time-Life and the Columbia Broadcasting Sys-
tem (CBS). When the CED spoke, its propagandists wrote: a 1958 pamphlet, “Defense Against Inflation,”
was discussed in 354 papers and magazines, reaching 31 million people.
Immediately after its formation, the CED began mapping a postwar program to expand chemical-in-
tensive agriculture and to grant industrial and financial interests more control over it. It worked to create a
postwar economy built on massive and profitable industrial growth in the North, which would require an
enormous pool of cheap labor. Their first report on agriculture was published in 1945, at a time when farm-
ers were doing very well by feeding a war-ravaged world. Farmers flourished even with higher postwar
production costs due to New Deal farm measures that ensured that farm income would keep up with the
cost of farming—an important policy known as parity. The CED opposed continuation of these programs,
which had been created by the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 to help farmers receive prices for their
products that were on par with the rest of the economy—much like a livable wage.
Among the programs created by the legislation to achieve parity were acreage reduction and land set-
asides, which were both focused on reducing the bane of agriculture: overproduction. The Commodity
Credit Corporation (CCC) established a price floor by making loans to farmers when the food processors
or grain corporations refused to pay farmers a price that covered the cost of production. Farmers pledged
their crops to the government as collateral against the loans, effectively ensuring that they were paid a fair
price. The loan rate, set by the CCC and based on parity, acted as a price floor, because a farmer could sell
to a national grain reserve that was established as a last-resort market.
The grain reserve was filled when crops were abundant and prices were low; grain was released when
crops were scarce. In this way the reserve prevented crop prices from skyrocketing during times of drought
or low production. Since this policy stopped products from reaching the market if the price was not fair,
prices inevitably returned to a normal level, and farmers could pay off their loans. Together these policies
helped keep overproduction in check and reduced commodity price volatility. This meant farmers could
make a living without subsidies.
The parity programs worked so well that there was real prosperity in rural areas during World War II
and that postwar period. This was strikingly different from the post-World War I era when, without supply
management, farm prices collapsed. The programs also worked for Main Street by reducing price volatil-
ity, and the grain reserve actually made a profit of $13 million over twenty years as the crops were sold on
the commodity market. Meanwhile, the food-processing and grain industries preferred overproduction, be-
cause it led to cheap prices for the products they needed. Still, today, they continue to wage a propaganda
war against any policy that gives farmers a shot at fair prices.
The CED carried on a campaign against these programs for political reasons, beyond the desire for
cheap commodities and an increased cheap industrial labor pool. These interests feared the political power
of farmers, who since the Civil War had been on the vanguard of populism, protesting against abuses by
the railroads, banks, and grain merchants, among other monied interests.
Farmers hard hit by the depression of the 1870s had reacted desperately to a tight money supply and to
the high shipping rates charged by railroads, and they organized political groups, including the Grange and
the Farmers' Alliance. The populist agrarian revolt, which lasted from 1860 through the early twentieth