Agriculture: Food for Freedom

In his longtime crusade to get the Government off the farm and off the farmer’s back, Charles B. Shuman (TIME cover, Sept. 3) has made more proposals than Tommy Manville. Farmer-president of the giant (1,677,820 members) American Farm Bureau Federation, largest and most influential U.S. farm organization, Shuman has almost invariably been ignored in Washington, where his call for a return to a free market in farm products is viewed as an invitation to chaos. Times are changing. Today, as the world’s population threatens to outstrip its ability to pro duce food, many experts predict that Washington will ultimately have to stimulate rather than stifle the U.S. farmer’s herculean productivity.

Thus Charlie Shuman last week offered a practical proposal to unshackle the farmer without shackling his pocketbook. When the eleven-year-old, $14 billion Food for Peace program expires next year, he suggested, the U.S. should begin feeding hungry nations with farm products bought on the open market rather than with Government-owned surpluses. “If the market price is given the opportunity to respond to foreign aid demand,” Shuman told the Farm Bureau’s annual convention in Chicago, “it should be possible to discontinue the present control programs, and price supports could be used only as originally intended—to stabilize marketing, not to fix prices.”

Under Shuman’s plan, dubbed Marketing Food for Freedom, U.S. agricultural products would no longer be sold for “Mickey Mouse money,” as Farm Bureau staffers call the soft currencies the U.S. takes in counterpart-fund payments for its food. Instead, the Government would buy food for foreign countries, give away 20% to the neediest and poorest nations, and distribute the remainder on credit to be paid off in dollars. His program, said Shuman, would eventually eliminate money spent on Food for Peace as well as the annual $3 billion subsidy doled out to farmers.

Shuman’s plan coincides with the Johnson Administration’s new determination that U.S. food should be used selectively as a lever to force hungry nations to expand their own agricultural production. He urged that this aim can best be realized by extending food aid to foreign countries only on condition that recipients 1) replace government management of agriculture with a market-price system and 2) encourage private capital investment by permitting incentives and checking inflation.