Agriculture: The Great Society, Country Style

The President's annual farm message is a melancholy event: it invariably proposes the waste of several billion dollars.

President Johnson's farm program, sent to Congress last week, is no exception.

It would cost nearly as much as the present $6.9 billion. Even more distressing, the President obviously recognized past and present failures ("We need to change much of our thinking on farm policy"), but declined to take action. For the future, he offered only another "fundamental examination of the entire agricultural policy of the United States."

Far from recommending that farm subsidies,...

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