The best economic news in the U.S. last week, bar none, was the boom in U.S. agriculture. From all over the country reports trickled into Washington showing that the farmer, after being the lowest man on the economic totem pole since 1955, is making an astonishing comeback. Agriculture Department experts scarcely dared believe some of their own figures. As of mid-April, the prices that farmers get are up 9.8% over the same time last year. The prices they pay are up, too—some 3%. But the net improvement is pushing their annual income to $13 billion v. $11.5 billion last year.
Moreover, the picture in individual farm commodities is even brighter. Items:
¶ Thanks to a brisk competition between steak-hungry consumers and farmers trying to rebuild their drought-depleted cattle herds by holding back or buying up heifers, beef prices were running 30% above last year, spreading joy from Texas to the feed lots of Kansas City.
¶ Hogs were up 20% above last year and holding long after most farm economists expected a seasonal price break; many counties in the corn belt reported the most favorable corn-hog ratio in history—up to 25-1. (Usual make-money point for hog raisers is when 1 cwt. of live hog sells for 12 bu. of corn.)
¶ Even the egg—a big thing from California to Delaware—was selling for 25% above last year, so high that many poultrymen feared consumers might rebel.
¶ Partly because of the Florida freeze, but also because of continued high food demand from city folks, fresh vegetables were selling 40% higher than last year.
¶ And the once heavily subsidized potato was selling, unaided, more than 150% higher, carrying the new farm prosperity all the way up to Maine's Aroostook County.
Main Street Evidence. But as far as the general U.S. economy was concerned, the best evidence of farm recovery was on the main streets of farm towns. In Oskaloosa, Iowa, a typical Midwestern farm market town (pop. 11,000), where farmers long were sullen and resentful over drought and low farm prices, TIME Correspondent Jonathan Rinehart found cash registers jingle-jangling more merrily than in years. Manager Ernest Dilley of the Thriftway Supermarket reported that farm wives, in a delicate shift in buying habits, suddenly had taken to buying cake mixes, scorning the economies of blending their own. Manager John Liley of the local J. C. Penney store gloated: "We had the best April we've ever had." Predicted Mrs. Gilbert Howarth of Howarth Sales & Service: "Last year we sold 15 air conditioners. This year we expect to sell 20. And that's not bad when you consider there are eight other stores in town where you can buy them."