It reduces the need to rely on other countries for corn production. In 1972, the Soviet Union, suffering disastrous harvests, purchased 30 million tons of American grain. 0000009293 00000 n On June 19, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture. Butz said to be furious, but took no steps to stop such shifting. The Dustbowl that ensued temporarily eradicated farming from Americas most fertile lands, threatening the countrys ability to provide. Within the food system, five major trends have enabled widespread industrialization. He received a bachelor of science degree in agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in agricultural economics in 1937. 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. What readers find is that Ford did not want to fire Butz but was left with no choice. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in Agricultural Economics in 1937. 26 206 In 1973, Nixon's agricultural secretary, Earl Butz, oversaw a change in the philosophy of the U.S. farm program. Myth: Earl Butz was a pivotal figure. An Administration official who has watched Butz during such White (louse meetings says, He's very quick, which is important in the infighting, And he knows how to lose battles so he can win wars. (One early victory was his outmaneuvering Nixon Administration economic planners so as to get the farmers and their products excluded from price controls. But if the two stay in balance, if the production is matched by just the right amount of foreign sales and there is enough left over for the domestic market, then farmers will get a good income, consumers won't pay inflated prices and the nation gets some help on its balance of payments problems. Our productive capacity so far exceeds our capacity to consume, he says, that we couldn't even eat all the wheat we grow if it were free. But increasing U. S. exports has taken a certain wheeling and dealing. 8 Due to government assistance, American farmers experienced continued success during and immediately following World War I. American land policy began in the wake of the Revolutionary War, designed to bolster agricultural production to support the expanding nation. Meanwhile, interest rates had spiked, making all of those loans farmers had taken out in the 70s into a paralyzing burden. It is possible, too, that domestic food prices would drop, although, because of the middleman factor, that is far from certain. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window). Produce all you can, and well the sell the surplus overseas! " Earl Butz 3. At the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, Butz made fun of Pope Paul VI's opposition to "population control" by quipping, in a mock Italian accent: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules. The deal came at the same time as the Nixon administration was trying to ease tensions between the worlds two super powers (at that time) and to bolster U.S. farm income to help win that years presidential election. [26][27], On May 22, 1981, Butz pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges for having under-reported income he earned in 1978. Known as one of the greenest commercial buildings in the world, since it opened its doors on Earth Day in 2013 the Bullitt Center has been setting a new standard for sustainable design. " I understood public relations and always maintained a high profile. Butz was born in Albion, Indiana, and brought up on a dairy farm in Noble County, Indiana. [25] In this debate he defended what he saw as the achievements of an industrial agriculture that was replacing the longstanding structure of small family farms and rural communities. The man was a creep. 0000069351 00000 n Then, during President Fords election campaign of 1976, Butz told a racially offensive joke, and he was forced to resign. 0000048818 00000 n TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. They had two sons, William Powell and Thomas Earl Butz.[4]. [3] Butz issued a statement saying that he had not "intended to impugn the motives or the integrity of any religious group, ethnic group or religious leader. 9As prices of agricultural commodities soared, farmers maximized production to increase their profits. Meet the Press with Secretary Earl L. Butz, Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary James T. Lynn; Summary Photograph shows Lawrence Spivak (center) with guests Butz, Weinberger, and Lynn and four journalists, including James Kilpatrick and Carl Rowan (second and third from left) on the television show Meet the Press. Butz was furious. 0000009209 00000 n 0000056225 00000 n www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf, Atkin, Michael, Grain in the Global Political Economy. In, Henderson, G.C.. Notes and Memoranda: The Agricultural Credits Act of 1923., Rasmussen, Wade, Gladys Baker, and James Ward. A side goal was to go easy on the land. 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. As a result of the boom in exports of American grain, prices for grain shot up. Earl Butz Oral History Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum 3 Butz: Oh, Nixon was warm and personal when you got to know him. 0000009377 00000 n Robert Lewis of the Farmers Union and other farm leaders say the Secretary's recent role in the Presidential veto of higher price supports for dairy farmers raises new questions about his concern for small farmers, some of whom need Government help to stay on the land. A Des Moines Register poll indicated last year that less than half of Iowa farmers thought Butz was doing a good job, and some farm leaders regard Iowa as a bellwether. The maritime unions seized the opportunity to press for more favorable shipping rates by refusing to load grain vessels bound for Russia. Earl L. Butz ), And despite the rise of organic this and local that a trend that annoyed Butz to no end the old campaigners vision of maximum-production agriculture has become more entrenched then ever. I've got a department full of people who know how people react out in the country. Rather than use federal policy as a check on farm output, Butz saw it as a lever to maximize output. (See Henry Wallace's "Ever-Normal Granary".) Current agricultural policy has proved this as well, as America can no longer sustain the health and environmental implications of subsidy fueled factory farms. The dust bowl was a fresh memory. In 1970, the Government was paying farmers $3.7 billion in subsidies, mostly as an incentive not to plant. 0000008682 00000 n [4] In 1968, he also ran for Governor of Indiana, but came in a distant third at the Republican state convention to eventual winner Edgar Whitcomb and future governor Otis R. Bowen. Failed farms got folded into larger operations at cut-rate prices. Your support keeps our unbiased, nonprofit news free. The greatest source of unhappiness to Butz is the high percentage of the Agriculture Department taken up by food stamps school lunches, and other trition and social programs. Earl Butz stayed on as Secretary of Agriculture after Nixon was impeached and engineered legislation sharply reducing federal subsidies for farmers. [20], Butz returned to West Lafayette, Indiana, and was named dean emeritus of Purdue's School of Agriculture. The Agricultural Credits Act of 1923, which The Quarterly Journal of Economics reported would save farms through long term loans available on farm mortgages andshort term credits available through banks, provided limited financial relief, but did not reduce surpluses. He also advised farmers to get big or get out adapt or die, in the belief that bigger farms were more productive. I fear he may be right. 0000009335 00000 n Reader support helps sustain our work. Perhaps the most widely shared gripe with Earl Butz is that of the food shoppers, over the skyrocketing prices of food. http://www.stanford.edu/group/west/cgi-bin/pager.php?id=49. 0000068205 00000 n A mere five years earlier, Nixon himself had been recorded in the Oval Office telling Donald Rumsfeld, Most of them, basically, are just out of the trees. 0000042235 00000 n This taste for combat played a part in both his nomination in 1971 by Richard Nixon and the subsequent battle in the Senate over his confirmation. 0000071399 00000 n You are the most productive part of America! 0000008170 00000 n He was the uncle of NFL defensive tackle Dave Butz, an All-American at Purdue University and All-Pro with the St. Louis Cardinals (1973-74) and Washington Redskins (1975-88). As their desperation grew, farmers failed to practice sustainable farming methods, which exasperated the Dust Bowl. 0000071753 00000 n I went to Syria. Despite helping to eradicate acute hunger and malnutrition, the bill devastated small farmers and contributed to decreasing the number of farms in America by 63%, effectively changing rural landscapes and economies. As part of our commitment to sustainability, in 2021 Grist moved its office headquarters to the Bullitt Center in Seattles vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood. The act granted settlers one hundred and sixty acres of land, which they would own outright on the condition of improvement after five years of homesteading, or could purchase at a low cost after six months. trailer 0000054094 00000 n A key event that drove the global adoption of the Diet-Heart hypothesis was the 1972 US Presidential election in which the incumbent Richard Nixon was confronted by a losing war in Vietnam, rising . University of Washington researcher Adam Drewnowski found that one dollar purchased 1,200 calories of cookies, but only 250 calories of carrots. In 1972, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R were deep in the middle of the Cold War, but that did not stop the daily business of trade . 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. 0000029423 00000 n 0000055445 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. One Iowa land excavator told the Journal that farmers are trying to squeeze everything they can out of their land. While conservatives have consistently pushed more aggressive, pro-agribusiness policies, liberals have often responded with pro-agribusiness policies of their own, even when that meant undermining their own natural allies: small and mid-sized farmers, farm workers, rural minority . 0000042400 00000 n The New Deal policymakers had seen how high-production agriculture could devastate lands productivity. In King Corn, Butz argued that the corn subsidy had dramatically reduced the cost of food for all Americans by improving the efficiency of farming techniques. But Butz did forcefully equate the interests of agribusiness with the national interest. HV6}W\]l]E6 T@>m3D;6d6}X"9s/~=[*W/2*" ss(vKr>WuPaX@Y6%PWAyR +u] ?`]_E(,a(i 0000043800 00000 n 0000062275 00000 n 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. The problem was that most of the countrys grain production was in areas subject to severe winters and droughts. 0000057693 00000 n When prices threatened to go too high, the payments would end and the land would go back into cultivation. 0000000016 00000 n It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. Donate today to keep our climate news free. It also undermines my claim that Butzs remark was not anti-Catholic. He also came up with a weakly worded proposal to Congress to strengthen criminal penalties and minimize conflict of interest in inspection agencies, some of which had been owned by the same grain firms whose products they inspected. After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. By artificially increasing demand for food, food production became more efficient and drove down the cost of food for everyone. The move worked dramatically. 0000066862 00000 n 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. Going back to the dust bowl of the 1930s and President Roosevelt's New Deal that followed, the United States controlled commodity prices by paying farmers to limit production. Jenny Georgieva. We need to reject the "go big or go . This program had unsuccessfully attempted to prevent a national oversupply of corn and low corn prices. On the other hand, heavy exports can lead to. [9], Butz took over the Department of Agriculture during the most recent period in American history that food prices climbed high enough to generate political heat. All but 30 days of the term were suspended. 0000054304 00000 n 0000043465 00000 n His technique, Foreman says, is to pose as friend of the farmer and try to pit him against consumers. After the 1973 farm bill, Americans spent a lower percentage of their income on food than ever before, purchasing more calories for less money, a trend that adversely impacted the nations diet. Food and food production is no exception as now only 2% of Americans are farmers and most live in urban spaces where they have limited access to food in it's natural form. The Secretary tells American farmers that high price guarantees, or supports, would lead you backward to the days when Government controls dictated what you planted and how much, and in the long run, lead to overproduction. We think alike. He is known for King Corn (2007), News 15 Nightbeat (1985) and Independent Lens (1999). A few years after he left the government, Butz got busted for tax evasion. 0000054849 00000 n [28], Butz continued to serve on corporate boards and speak on agricultural policy. Earl Butz has devoted more than 20 years of his life in public and academic service: as an Assistant Secretary in the Eisenhower administration; as a professor and then a dean at one of the most distinguished universities . Gerald Ford dispatches him to farm states, where sometimes Ford has been successful in the primaries, as in Illinois'and sometimes not, as in Indiana and Nebraska. 0000041388 00000 n 0000057943 00000 n [21][22][23][24], In November 1977, Butz debated writer Wendell Berry at Manchester University in Manchester, Indiana. 19Dubbed the Great Grain Robbery, food prices in America soared. Later, the firms sold the corn at more than double what they had paid for it. 0000062082 00000 n Millions of hogs, cattle and chicken were sold for slaughter as producers reduced their inventories. 0000044615 00000 n Butz's motto became "get big or get out," encouraging the growth of corporate factory-farms and increasing subsidised production of staples for export. In 1972, the Soviet Union, suffering disastrous harvests, purchased 30 million tons of American grain. 0000008903 00000 n " Earl Butz 2. You could no longer assume your fellow whites would protect you for telling a joke insulting to blacks, and you could no longer assume your fellow blacks would protect you for telling a joke insulting to Jews. 0000046259 00000 n But the decline of family farms and rural communities are not inevitabilities, and Earl Butz's vision for American agriculture does not have to be our fate. citation-type="booksimple" Surviving farms responded to low prices by planting more, hoping to make up on volume what they were losing on price. In the 1920s, agricultural policies destabilized supply and demand and sunk the nation into its lowest state of economic despair during the Great Depression. Actress: Swedish Lessons in Love. Keep up with history and join our newsletter. Later farm bills saw adjustments, but the Great Depression and brief scare in the 1930s asserted that the livelihood of farmers, and the American people, was too closely tied to supply controls to lift them. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. As intended, Nixons agricultural policy lowered food prices, but the imbalance of supply and demand manifested in long-term problems. 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. 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. [3], Butz was an alumnus of Purdue University, where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. Butz, who lived in West Lafayette, Ind., was 98. Following World War I, the government revoked wartime price supports and the European market simultaneously recovered, causing agricultural exports to decline by 20% and grain prices to plummet. One of Butz's chief antagonists has been the Agribusiness Accountability Project, which has traced the links between the Agriculture Department the landgrant colleges and the agribusiness industry. 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. The farmers and their products excluded from price controls, over the skyrocketing prices of food for.! 2007 ), news 15 Nightbeat ( 1985 ) and Independent Lens ( )... And then a doctorate in agricultural economics in 1937 Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, 1979 the countrys grain production in. To plant full of people who know how people react out in the 70s into a paralyzing.... Nightbeat ( 1985 ) and Independent Lens ( 1999 ). [ 4 ] output, Butz busted! Reduces the need to rely on other countries for corn production a member of Alpha Rho. 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