GET THOSE BOYS OFF THE FARM! - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 8

The CED's strategy for agriculture culminated in the 1962 publication of “An Adaptive Program for
Agriculture,” the aforementioned radical document that laid out a plan to drastically reduce the number of
farmers, creating a labor pool for industry and a vision for the globalization of food production, through a
free trade agenda. The report, which was prepared by fifty influential business leaders and eighteen eco-
nomists from leading universities, declared that “agriculture's chief need is a reduction of the number of
people.” This would be accomplished “by getting a large number of people out of agriculture before they
are committed to it as a career.”
The report recommended stopping the promotion of agriculture in vocational training, reeducating rural
young men for jobs in industry, and providing help to relocate them to the places where their new skills
were needed. It recommended removing parity price supports after five years so that “farm prices would
be governed by free Market forces,” and went on to conclude that these suggested programs “would result
in fewer workers in agriculture, working a smaller number of farms of greater average size.”
The CED's views on trade, which were printed in its 1945 pamphlet “International Trade, Foreign In-
vestment and Domestic Employment,” have become the official policy of the United States today. The
CED said, “Restrictions to world trade prevent the free flow of goods, services and capital from where
they are available to where they are needed. This obstruction prevents efficiency in the use of the world's
human and material resources.” 10
The 1962 agricultural report laid out one of the fundamental pieces of the Agreement on Agriculture
that is currently overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The CED notes, “In an efficient organ-
ization of the world economy, the United States would make much larger exports of farm commodities to
Europe” and that the removal of restrictive quotas in Europe “should be a cardinal point of United States
trade policy.” A 1964 CED report, “Trade Negotiations for a Better Free World Economy,” became a road
map in the trade negotiations taking place at that time and in the future. The manifesto justified trade liber-
alization as “economic efficiency” and argued that it must include the “reduction of impediments to trade
of agricultural goods.”
The emphasis at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the alleged economic efficiency of larger farms
capable of investing in new equipment and using new technologies began during the aftermath of World
War II, at the same time that the CED was formed. A 1943 USDA-sponsored report said, “[O]ur advo-
cacy of a public policy which favors the family farm does not mean that we favor the retention of all small
farms.” The report noted that of the existing 6 million farms, 2.5 million did not meet the agency's produc-
tion criteria. It stated that 84 percent of farm products came from one third of U.S. farms and that the goal
was “to direct the surplus manpower into productive nonagricultural activities” 11
The continuation of New Deal programs that had established parity for farmers created a temporary rur-
al prosperity during the decade following the war. In addition, the demand for U.S. farm products increased
due to the devastation of Europe, the disintegration of colonial empires, assorted weather catastrophes
around the world, and the adoption of the Marshall Plan for Europe. These good times were short-lived.
In 1953, the first stage of the propaganda war was won with the appointment of Ezra Benson, a far-
right ideologue trained as an agricultural economist, as secretary of agriculture. During his eight years in
President Eisenhower's administration, Benson served simultaneously in the governing hierarchy of the
Mormon church—a multibillion-dollar agribusiness operation to this day—as one of the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles. He eventually became the thirteenth prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
Under Benson's management, the dismantlement of the 1930s parity legislation began and prices for
farmers began to fall, beginning the ongoing modern farm crisis. Benson vehemently denounced the New
Deal farm programs as “socialism.” Although Eisenhower campaigned on a platform of parity for farmers,
Benson's goal was to eviscerate it, and he successfully pushed the concept of flexible price supports, giv-