THE greens, golds, purples and rich browns had never seemed more luxuriant than this fall. They splashed across the plains and hills in patchwork squares and furrowed curlicues. To harvest their bounty, farmers arose at dawn, gulped down hot breakfasts, climbed onto their great machines and roared onto the fields. Hour after hour they worked, often far into the night. Day after day they labored, until the land was cleared of all but stubble. Then they returned to the fields to prepare them for spring sowing.
These were the sights and the sounds—and the results were spectacular. Despite the shackles of Government control, the American farmer in 1962 has broken through to a new per-acre production record. Kansas wheat ran to an average of 23.5 bu. as against a 1951-60 mark of 19.1. North Dakota wheat yielded 28.7 bu., more than twice last year's, and nearly double the ten-year average. Iowa corn came in at 76 bu. per acre, well above the ten-year average of 57.2. Thanks to modern farm technology, the total harvest was wrought from 288 million acres of cropland—10 million fewer than last year. By 1980, when the U.S. will have 250 million mouths to feed, the farmer will be able to produce all the food and fiber necessary for domestic and export use on only 238 million acres.
The Bounty & the Bureaucracy. Such production is both a blessing and a bane to the U.S. Under the Government's inane farm program, it has saddled the taxpayers with surplus worth $6.5 billion. The maintenance cost alone for this larder runs to better than $2,000,000 a day. Worst of all, the bounty has brought with it a bureaucracy the likes of which the U.S. has never seen before.
When the nation was born, 90% of the population farmed for a living without bureaucratic assistance. In 1838, the House of Representatives failed to pass a modest bill proposing the employment of a clerk to oversee the country's agricultural program. The next year Congress relented, appropriating $1,000 for the "collection of agricultural statistics and for other agricultural purposes." Then, 100 years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill establishing the Department of Agriculture "to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the U.S. useful information on subjects connected with agriculture."
Little did Lincoln know how the department would acquire and diffuse. It has become an army of 111,000 employees with an annual budget of $6.5 billion. On the one hand, Agriculture tries to control production. On the other, it spends millions for research on how to increase production. It issues special publications sufficient to fill a 104-page catalogue. Among the titles: "Influence of Certified Stocks on Spot-Futures Price Relationships for Cotton," "What You Should Know About Leptospirosis," and "Planning a Bathroom." One report is ponderously titled "Human Energy Expenditures as Criteria for Design of Household Storage Facilities." It explains how to design shelf space.