Agriculture: How to Shoot Santa Claus

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average city dweller, who pays plenty in taxes for farm programs, also —and unfairly—blames evaporating household budgets on the farmer. Yet, protests Shuman, "consumers are being asked to add $300 million to their grocery bills for a farm program that farmers do not want." By that, he means the Agricultural Act of 1965—the farm bill—which cleared the House two weeks ago and is now before the Senate Agriculture Committee. The chairman, Lousiana Democrat Allen Ellender, is aghast at the rising cost of Government farm programs and the ever-increasing surpluses, appears grimly determined to do something about it this time.

62½. Hardly anyone denies that the farm program is riddled with inconsistencies, inequities and absurdities. A farmer in Minnesota, who recently rented 300 acres of grassland, simply turned around and put it into the feed grain program's acreage diversion plan, which pays the farmer 62½ for every bushel of corn he does not grow but reasonably might have. Thus, without so much as sinking a spade in his earth, the farmer made a clear profit of more than $8,000. "And, besides," he noted accurately, "I can graze that rented land after October 1."

By far the biggest inequity is that those who need subsidies the least get the most. The Department of Agriculture estimates that one-third of its $3 billion-a-year expenditures for farm price supports and related programs goes to fewer than 100,000 larger farms. One suggested remedy would be to lower price supports for commodities and augment them with cash payments that would decrease in proportion to the volume of the commodity produced by any one farmer.

Charlie Shuman hoped at first that Rancher Lyndon Johnson would propose such bold departures. And, in fact, the President's State of the Union message promised "new approaches" to the whole agricultural problem. But Shuman was soon convinced that "L.B.J. wants a socialized agriculture." Why the disenchantment? In the interim, the Administration has sent a farm bill to Congress that, to Shuman's way of thinking, contains "nothing that is an improvement over the current law."

Shuman's disappointment was even keener because he felt that Johnson was throwing away a rare opportunity to move toward a freer market. His reasoning: the record 1965 crop was already a virtual certainty, and only proved again that the present control system was unworkable in reducing production. Thus, he figured, Johnson could afford to experiment with fewer controls and if it did not work out, could not be held accountable at the polls for not having made an honest effort to solve the farm problem.

With his overwhelming popular mandate and his awesome power over Congress, Lyndon Johnson was given—and passed up—a historic opportunity to reform and redirect the farm program.

The Bill. Instead, as passed by the House, the Administration bill would extend the program for four years—the longest life of any omnibus farm bill in U.S. legislative history. Its provisions essentially are little changed from previous programs, with the exception of an additional 50¢-a-bu. subsidy for wheat, raising the support price to $2.50 for wheat grown for domestic consumption, and a new cropland retirement plan under which the Agriculture Secretary may draw up