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At 58, Shuman is about as chipper as any of his Aberdeen-Angus calves. He neither smokes nor drinks ("I'm not a teetotaler," he says, "I don't want the stimulation"), and strives mightily to refrain from cussing.
Crisis in the Making. Fortunately, Shuman's blood pressure is low, for there is little likelihood that the farm mess will be solved in the near future. Any substantial answer lies elusively between the extremes represented by Charles Shuman and Willard Cochrane. The Shuman Farm Bureau approach, calling for complete freedom in the marketplace, strikes a deep emotional chord but runs head-on into economic and political difficulties. Cochrane's solution, a farmer-proof system of mandatory production controls, defies the character and political power of the farmer.
The farmer's shadow still looms large on Capitol Hill. However, there are signs that an increasingly urbanized America is losing patience with ever-mounting subsidies and surpluses. The political influence of the farmer has already declined. Thus, barring war or prolonged general drought, reasons Cochrane, "increased agricultural productivity is going to drive farm program costs, under voluntary control programs, into direct collision with the budget limitation objectives of the urban voter within the next three to ten years. A crisis in commercial farm policy is in the making."
Obviously, in a free society, farmers cannot be forcibly herded off the land —though former Budget Director Kermit Gordon has estimated that there are upwards of 2.5 million farmers who "do not now and cannot in the fu ture be expected to operate successful commercial farms." In any case, while the number of farms and of people living on farms in the U.S. has already declined by one third since 1955, surpluses continue to pile up.
The U.S. can no longer rely on global giveaways as an open-end solution for surpluses. For all its good intentions, the Food for Peace Program cannot be greatly expanded without running into serious economic and political problems about world commodity prices; as it is, the U.S. is accused of "dumping" surpluses on nations that would go hungry without them. Moreover, most countries receiving this aid, such as India, which took 20% of the entire U.S. grain crop last year—and needed more—are unable to import available grain for lack of handling and storage facilities.
One promising outlet for surpluses is through increased commercial sales abroad. Of the $6.2 billion worth of farm products that the U.S. sent abroad last year, $4.6 million was through normal export channels. The future of U.S. sales to Common Market countries ($1.4 billion in 1964) is threatened by the community's drift toward protective tariffs. But Europe is not the whole world; as other nations improve their diets and elevate their tastes, they may open huge new markets for U.S. farm products. Even so, they could absorb only a fraction of the 5 to 10% year-in, year-out overproduction of U.S. agriculture.
Overproduction may one day become a virtue, for in the view of many experts, large areas of the world are faced with famine in the next decade. Within ten years or less, Swedish Economist Gunnar Myrdal predicts, the world will need every shred of