0000013599 00000 n How did Earl Buts (secretary of Ag) change the farm policy in 1973? The obituaries for Earl Butz who went to his reward Feb. 2 at the enviable age of 98all note that he will be remembered less for his accomplishments as Agriculture secretary under Presidents. First, Butz was called a disciple of Ezra Benson, who, under Eisenhower, had presided over huge grain surpluses, low farm prices and the start of the great exodus from American farms. In 1973, he reduced the number of acres set aside or taken out of grain production from 25 million acres in 1972 to 7.4 million acres in 73. Earl Lauer "Rusty"[1] Butz (July 3, 1909 February 2, 2008) was a United States government official who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Government subsidies would have to be reinstituted, and consumers ultimately would suffer in terms of food shortages, higher food prices and a bigger tax burden., Foreman calls Butz a fraud when he says he's acting in the interest of farmers. He's a spokesman for the big corporate farmers, for the food processors and for the grocery people. 18. And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. 1976-1977. Earl Butz. 3By the end of the nineteenth century, agricultural policy contributed to the settlement of 80 million acres of farmland. [29] He is buried at the Tippecanoe Memory Gardens in West Lafayette, Indiana. YouTube, Follow us on 0000066173 00000 n 0000009209 00000 n 0000047170 00000 n Adapt or die, resist and perish, Butz had advised farmers in the 1950's when he was Benson's assistant, and the statement came back to haunt him. 0000029154 00000 n After forty years of regulating production to balance demand, domestic and international circumstances compelled President Richard Nixon to rethink agricultural policy. Membership was supposed to have included consumer interests, but the consumer representative turned out to be Jane Armstrong a vice president for consumer affairs of Jewell Food Stores, a major supermarket chain. 0000062082 00000 n xref 0000041223 00000 n Terms of Use | Privacy Policy. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, Minimum Tillage Changes Planters & Cultivators, Silent Spring & the Environmental Movement, Connections between Surface and Groundwater, Nebraska's Unique Natural Resource Districts, Insecticides DDT's Rise, Fall & Rise Again, The EPA, the Endangered Species Act & Pesticides, 14th Annual Tractor & Auto show & Summer Fair. Heather H. (October 23, 1973). They are making money nowand it was Butz who was there when the going got good. [19] The quotation was among the inspirations behind the comedy film Loose Shoes, particularly the sketch "Dark Town After Dark", made in 1977 but released in 1980. Butz . Harvest failures came repeatedly and were usually severe. America's total grain production of 242 million tons in 1975 represented an increase of 81 million tons from what it was in 1961. Help us continue to bring you the best of the archives without the dust! Naftali: Was it surprising to you when you were asked to come to Washington again to be in his Cabinet? The need for reformation has revealed no agricultural policies are sustainable for indefinite periods of time. 0000007858 00000 n 0000052562 00000 n Between 1971 and 1972, crop failure in the Soviet Union lead the country to purchase nearly 25% of Americas wheat. 0000067244 00000 n in agriculture (1932) and a Ph. He thinks using grain in foreign policy is really a fun game, one department official said of Kissinger. 0000069545 00000 n 0000070488 00000 n He was Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Subsidy System. BJW -WYFW(.V*(T[)&(?`".\xc;; On June 19, he was sentenced to five years in prison. 0000048818 00000 n 26 0 obj<> endobj The Agriculture Department is estimating that grain production will roach 255 million tons, 13 million more than last year's. Dr. Earl L. Butz, educator, administrator, and government official was born on July 3, 1909 to Harmon Lee Butz and Ada Tillie Lower in Albion, Indiana. Agricultural policy has supported Americas greatest triumphs. Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture. The program went from limited and controlled by the government to expansion, so more food could be produced. . In the 1974 incident, the Times reported, Butz, using a mock Italian dialect, criticized on Pope Paul VIs opposition to using artificial birth control as a solution to world food problems. In the 1976 incident, the Times said, Butz made a remark in which he described blacks as coloreds who wanted only three things satisfying sex, loose shoes and a warm bathroom desires that Mr. Butz listed in obscene and scatological terms.. Earl Lauer "Rusty" Butz (July 3, 1909 - February 2, 2008) was a United States government official who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Earl L. ButzEarl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture during the 1970s but came to be remembered more for a vulgar racial comment that brought about his resignation during the 1976 presidential election race, died Saturday in Washington. 0000009251 00000 n 0000064563 00000 n The Dustbowl that ensued temporarily eradicated farming from Americas most fertile lands, threatening the countrys ability to provide. The policy sometimes paid farmers to not grow food in order to keep agricultural prices high and allow small farms to survive. BY TAKA YAMAGUCHI In 1976, then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz coined the now infamous phrase, "food is a weapon.". If lie doesn't get it, he'll have a firstclass farm issue on his hands because we'll have enough of a surplus to remind farmers that he's been against higher Government price supports. The General Accounting Office warns that such a bumper crop could deal a serious blow to the farm economy, because the Agriculture Department has no real plans for dealing with either surpluses or shortages. To ensure bountiful food for the home front and the devastated allied nations, the government implemented price supports on crops. 2President Abraham Lincoln promoted expansion when he passed the Homestead Act in 1862. 0000008397 00000 n These policies benefited the burgeoning. 0000067068 00000 n 20In response to the unanticipated prices, Nixon declared a war on hunger, and promised the American people, I not only accept the responsibility for ending hunger and malnutrition, I claim the responsibility. 21. The man was a creep. Today, expansion-based policy characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has returned. He went on a speaking tour and encouraged farmers to plant fence row to fence row to meet global demand. The program that Butz inherited worked like this: When farmers began to produce too much and prices began to fall, the government would pay farmers to leave some land fallow, with the goal of pushing prices up the following season. He replaced Palmby with Carroll Brunthaver, a former official of Cook Industries, another leading grain firm. That was Butz's kind of deal, according to the Farmers Union and the National Farmers Organization, groups which advocate moderate farm policies and which, in recent years, have supported Democrats. 7. 0000046978 00000 n In Omaha, President Ford campaigned with Butz at his side and told a farm audience: I'd hate to see a good team broken up in the middle of the game. Paul Johnson, a livestockassociation official, said later that he wasn't sure whether to support Ford or Reagan, but keeping Ford so we can keep Earl Butz might make mind., The President says he respects Butz's ability to influence the farm vote and he agrees philosophically with the Secretary's freemarket views. He emphasizes that the flight from the farms to the cities has slowed down during his reign; that the decrease of 11,000 farm units in 1975 is well below the annual decrease of more than 95,000 before 1969. But I also think that if youre going to define the long life of a public man by the most vile things he is known to have saida fair judgment in this instanceyou bear some obligation to reveal what those vile things were. That was true in the Soviet Union, as well. Facebook, Follow us on 0000063118 00000 n For Butz and his agribusiness cronies, the program amounted to socialism an intolerable check on farmers ability to plant and harvest as much as possible. Broken Heartland: The Rise of Americas Rural Ghetto, Enterprise and other rental companies move into car-share market, Hawaii quietly rolls back innovative plan to manage marine resources, A major dairy company plans to slash methane emissions but theres an elephant in the room, What 5,000-year-old skeletons tell us about living with climate change, England finally joins Europe in banning single-use plastic foodware, Why North Dakota is preparing to sue Minnesota over clean energy, Justice Department sues major polluter in Louisianas Cancer Alley, Study: Extreme heat is driving deaths in US prisons, Walmart, Target, Home Depot lead pack of retailers emitting millions of pounds of CO2 through shipping. 0000067829 00000 n " Earl Butz 2. Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture under President Nixon, urged farmers . On October 4, 1976, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over an obscene joke he'd made that was derogatory to blacks.You. Although not featured prominently in history books, American land and agricultural policy laid the groundwork for the countrys geographic, political, and economic development. 0000056798 00000 n 0000055231 00000 n Under the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, Roosevelt passed the inaugural farm bill, which subsidized farmers to limit their production. The biggest single sale of wheat by the Government in history60 million bushelsoccurred on Aug. 31, 1972, to Continental Grain Company, one of the firms deal. 0000067449 00000 n Earl Lauer Butz was born near Albion, Indiana, on July 3, 1909. Butz was born in Albion, Indiana, and brought up on a dairy farm in Noble County, Indiana. And during his tenure he has played a leading policy role in the decisions which sent a disproportionate share of FoodforPeace aid to rightwing governments, including those of South Korea, South VietCambodia and Chile. Blustering, boisterous, and often vulgar, Butz lorded over the U.S. farm scene at a key period. 0000061409 00000 n Butz was vice president of what has become the American Agricultural Economics Association (1948), and he was . 0000053132 00000 n 0000012251 00000 n ammonia grow corn faster 4x as much tractors made the farmers work easier and let them farm more land. Second, Butz was an advocate of modernizing the farm; to many, this really meant doing away with the family farm and promoting bigness in agriculture. 0000005075 00000 n 0000062821 00000 n 0000042235 00000 n In 1941, the Secretary set up a special zone consisting of about 362,000 acres, lying just to the south of the Canadian border, in which commercial logging was prohibited. Marshall Martin discusses policy with Earl Butz. Anyone can read what you share. 0000043989 00000 n 28 0 obj<>stream 0000004995 00000 n Secretary of Agriculture. http://millercenter.org/president/monroe/essays/biography/8. "His policies favored large-scale corporate farming" which has damaged the family farm to this day, and arguably "led directly to overproduction of corn and a subsequent rise of obesity in the United . He wouldn't embarrass a Cabinet member. Yet Earl Lauer Butz is often referred to these days as the greatest Secretary of Agriculture in the history of the Republic. On the other hand, heavy exports can lead to domestic shortagesand rises in consumer food prices, as they, indeed, did in 1972. 0000070129 00000 n Republican Senators in Kansas and Oklahoma warned President Ford's political advisers that they had better do something to prevent losing traditional G.O.P. 0000061873 00000 n Congressional investigators established that, in the massive 1972 grain sales to Russia, the Agriculture Department did not inform farmers about the pending sales and permitted the few large grain exporters handling the sales secretly to buy up huge supplies in the commodity markets at favorable prices. He was the one who pioneered the fundamental change in farm subsidies. It reduces the need to rely on other countries for corn production. 0000016123 00000 n 0000068205 00000 n He believed that a free, global market would bring higher prices, and for the few years that Russian agriculture struggled, he was right. Butz had helped to arrange that sale in the hope of giving a boost to crop prices to bring restive farmers tempted to vote for George McGovern into the Republican fold.[10]. But Butz is more interested in private trade (which usually means trade by a halfdozen large grain companies) and cash sales than in humanitarian giveaways, a view that has led to charges that he is oblivious to world hunger. Pros Of Corn Subsidy. The move worked dramatically. I went to Syria. 0000048246 00000 n 0000061181 00000 n 0000046462 00000 n (See Henry Wallace's "Ever-Normal Granary".) 0000028915 00000 n Farm incomes plunged and tens of thousands of farms went under. The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy. United States Department of Agriculture. His technique, Foreman says, is to pose as friend of the farmer and try to pit him against consumers. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed him the 18th US. From there, he went on to study agricultural economics, and eventually used his knowledge, along with his knack for political maneuvering and his quick wit, to forge a career that, in leading to his current post in the President's Cabinet, included serving in positions as Assistant Agriculture Secretary in the Eisenhower Administration, dean of agriculture at Purdue University and muchsoughtafter public speaker. 0000071933 00000 n Earl Butz Wallace would have seen these as the glory of his department.. 0000049595 00000 n During his leadership from 1964 to 1982, Premier Leonid Brezhnev made it official Soviet policy to maintain steady growth in the livestock industry. 0000056620 00000 n When major corruption at the grain ports first was revealed publicly early in 1975, Butz's initial reaction was to minimize it and to stress that only a small percentage of inspectors had been accused of crimes. The department's lax supervision of the grain exporters should have been known to Butz, because in the early 1970's the entire focus of expanding agricultural trade was on grain. The dust bowl was a fresh memory. Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, died this weekend at 98, leaving a colorfully offensive legacy and, thanks to the political correctness of the mainstream news media, a bit of a mystery as to why he's passed with such ignominy. He died still holding an emeritus position at Purdue. %PDF-1.4 % [3], Butz was an alumnus of Purdue University, where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. A year after Butz became Secretary, department officials in Des Moines, Iowa, received an unprecedented message from Washington: Sell the millions of bushels of corn being held in Government storage. President Abraham Lincoln promoted expansion when he passed the Homestead Act in 1862. the World Food Crisis of the early 1970s gave Butz the chance to promote the false notion that free markets would be good for farmers. HTPn0Stv4$>Pv@k'@zGq3(:nfd"qlPUByCzv#Ru {!:|A3hrM[6J)V>w7W]Z |H >dO o?j 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. [12], News outlets revealed a racist remark he made in front of entertainers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the 1976 Republican National Convention. Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, died this weekend at 98, leaving a colorfully offensive legacy and, thanks to the political correctness of the mainstream news media, a bit of a mystery as to why he's died in such ignominy. analyzed the issue of executive immunity in terms of general policy considerations, and stated its conclusion, quoted supra, in the same universal terms. Nixon plucked Butz out of Purdues agriculture department and planted him in the USDA in 1971. But the man likes confrontation, and uses it to disarm his critics. Butz and the department hierarchy appear equally unconcerned over the plight of Southern poultry farmers, who have in effect become employees of the large feed processing companies. What policy did he promote in 1973? endstream endobj 27 0 obj<> endobj 29 0 obj<> endobj 30 0 obj<>/Font<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC/ImageI]/ExtGState<>>> endobj 31 0 obj<> endobj 32 0 obj<> endobj 33 0 obj<> endobj 34 0 obj<> endobj 35 0 obj<>stream 0000014845 00000 n 0000065934 00000 n how much corn is grown with this fertilizer? The artificial prices implemented by the government masked the problems of overproduction that threatened food prices and the agricultural system as a whole. A side goal was to go easy on the land. " Earl Butz 4. 17The threat of another depression hastened the reinstatement of crop regulation through the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which restored financial security to farmers. 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