Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Further, in the summer of 1972, hoping to bolster farm incomes and dissuade farmers from voting for
George McGovern, Agriculture Secretary Butz blessed Cargill and four other grain traders' secret negoti-
ations with Russia, which was suffering from a bad harvest. The grain cartel made a $1.5 billion deal to
send a quarter of the U.S. grain harvest overseas—a move that had the effect of increasing food prices in
the United States.
Butz, an ever-popular farm-circuit speaker, traveled the country telling farmers to “get big or get out”
and to “plant fencerow to fencerow” to meet the global demand. In 1972, to boost production of grains,
Butz removed 25 million acres from the New Deal set-aside program, shrinking it to 7.4 million acres in
1973. Under his guidance, the 1973 Farm Bill reduced parity for crops to 50 percent or less. But many
farmers followed Butz's advice and began investing heavily in expanding operations. As a result, by 1978,
just 19 percent of U.S. farms were producing 78 percent of the country's crops.
The election of Jimmy Carter marked the worsening of the most severe farm crisis since the 1930s. Be-
cause of energy supply shortages in the United States and abroad, the cost of petroleum-based fertilizer,
farm equipment, and diesel fuel had skyrocketed, while the price for crops continued to drop. With land
prices also increasing, the only choice for many farmers was to sell or borrow—farm debt ballooned by
400 percent between 1960 and 1977.
In the fall of 1977, the American Agriculture Movement was born when a group of farmers meeting
in Springfield, Colorado, called for a national farmers' strike. They were desperate after the passage of
yet another Farm Bill that failed to address their continuing loss of equity. Farmers from across the nation
drove tractors to Pueblo, Colorado, and demanded that the secretary of agriculture take action to preserve
family farms.
Long before the Internet, news of the strike spread by word of mouth, and on December 10, 1977, tract-
orcades took place in many state capitals. In January 1978, fifty thousand farmers rallied in Washington,
D.C., and farmers continued to organize for a stop to foreclosures and to reinstitute parity. In January 1979,
a large tractorcade blocked traffic in the nation's capital, but when a blizzard hit the city during the protest,
farmers used their tractors to clear roads and provide transportation for emergency services. The protest,
which received national coverage, raised public awareness, but policy makers did not take the actions ne-
cessary to provide relief.
The crisis snowballed in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. Crop prices continued to drop be-
cause of overproduction, and farm debt increased dramatically. Farmers had to borrow against their land to
survive and keep farming, often using all of their equity until the bank foreclosed. Thousands of farm fam-
ilies faced the loss of their homes and land. The overseas demand for grain that Butz had promised never
materialized, and the land boom crashed, dramatically reducing the value of farm property. The farmers
who survived often had to depend on off-farm income. Meanwhile, cheap grain allowed the expansion of
factory farms, and the food processors and grain traders enjoyed record profits from the cheap commodit-
ies that received a taxpayer subsidy.
In April 1982, longtime farm activist Merle Hansen organized a meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, and more
than fifty farm, labor, and community organizations gathered to oppose Reagan-era policies and to demand
parity prices. He became the president of the North America Farm Alliance, a new coalition that brought
together many groups that are still collaborating today. He was emblematic of family farm leaders who
have put their lives on the line throughout our nation's history, and he once observed of agribusiness, “They
are not only setting farm, trade and food policies for the U.S.; they set them for the world.”
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