The obituaries for Earl Butzwho 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 Nixon and Ford than for the two off-color jokes that got him fired. 0000048818 00000 n
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For a few years, those actions seemed like a good business decision. 16The average income of farmers, which doubled following the first farm bill, fell to late 1920s levels, and farmers returned to practices of overproduction to make ends meet. From February 1993. He envisioned a hyper-efficient, centralized food system, one that could profitably and cheaply feed the world by manipulating (or adding value to) mountains of Midwestern corn and soy. 0000055830 00000 n
In order to profitably mass-produce convenience fare for a growing middle class, the food industry needed unchecked access to cheap inputs. The subsidy system might have had its problems, but the system really went off the rails with the advent of Earl Butz as Secretary of Agriculture under both President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford. 0000062821 00000 n
Twitter, Follow us on Butz drastically changed federal agricultural policy and re-engineered many New Deal-era farm support . He replaced Palmby with Carroll Brunthaver, a former official of Cook Industries, another leading grain firm. QB&qGN(>[:#u*@uE(RMkc'-b!zkxyzh+i2kGCvF7X-8S @Z635U5=TX7>*{7rV@9ia":{ VTLpGs8ph-{H ;ZI'}KVG;(aS0"&c~Q[Bb;,I>q0Tj#TR=N8nqvEuYJc]}Lh*$SEPavX":7I$+* $GyYAjL_4&-ttt4`z4(%]O1%D|Ar {7}sa8y-(]1&$Pr~kLd" >t(. endstream
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The move worked dramatically. analyzed the issue of executive immunity in terms of general policy considerations, and stated its conclusion, quoted supra, in the same universal terms. Moreover, the department paid hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies on the sales, enabling the companies to make additional profits and to keep the price to the Russians unrealistically low. 0000049017 00000 n
And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/bdsdcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(bdsdcc, Dimitri, Carolyn, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin. He said, I make no apology for my desire to raise farm prices.. 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. 0000045340 00000 n
10.How . ' , See the article in its original context from. You Are What You Grow.. Earl Butz has restored grain farmers pride in proving their enormous productive potential, and they love him. 0000067829 00000 n
Earl Butz has, in other words, clearly become the country's most controversial Agriculture Secretary since Ezra Taft Benson, and, after his recent behindthescenes struggle with Henry Kissinger, he has probably also emerged as the most powerful in history as well. High Agriculture Department officials began refusing to answer questions relating to grain sales to Russia and to Eastern European countries, saying sareastically that the diplomats had taken over. In 1932, at the Federal Farm Boards urging, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted a new approach to agricultural policy designed to restore crop prices by regulating supply and demand. Yet his legacy still thrives, and will not likely die as gently as the man. Documents From the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 . American Memory from the Library of Congress . 0000054680 00000 n
That same year, he was also named chairman of the United States delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Expansion efforts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in western migration that led to agricultural prosperity in rural areas. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. 0000009965 00000 n
Days after Butz died, the Wall Street Journal reported, In the U.S., farmers are razing old barns, ripping up sod and grassland, and uprooting fences some in a routine attempt to improve land, others in an effort to make room for the grain boom.. 0000059164 00000 n
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An increasingly consolidated meat industry learned to transform cheap grain into cheap but highly profitable burgers, chops, and chicken nuggets. (The habit of stuffing the USDA with industry cronies has proven hard to break. 0000069937 00000 n
The policy sometimes paid farmers to not grow food in order to keep agricultural prices high and allow small farms to survive. Blocked by White House budget officials and by President Ford's uncompromising stance against further Government regulation of business, Butz tried to patch up the graininspection system by adding more Federal supervisors. 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. 0000009293 00000 n
In addition, consumer food prices jumped. 0000047333 00000 n
Overall farm income jumped along with grain prices, from $2.3 billion in 1972 to $19.6 billion in '73. 0000049595 00000 n
How does corn get in your hair King corn? 0000064816 00000 n
Nevertheless, he was confirmed in the Senate by a close vote of 51 to 44. Blustering, boisterous, and often vulgar, Butz lorded over the U.S. farm scene at a key period. 0000014845 00000 n
x|kQO$c*M3Sj He tells the farmers that they are the last bastion of patriotism and hard work, and that the food they grow will be the key to world peace during the next quarter century. 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. Butz was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in Washington, DC, from 1954 to 1957 under President Dwight Eisenhower. 0000048080 00000 n
But if youd like to know precisely what those two jokes were, youre out of luck. 0000071060 00000 n
In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed him the 18th US. In public he seemed to be formal, but person-to-person, he was like any of the rest of us. 0000051487 00000 n
Changes in farming supported by government policy especially over the last century have incentivized farmers to grow crops that are easy to ship, store, and processnamely cereal grains and sweetenersensuring these foods are inexpensive and widely available. It was obvious, however, that policy decisions in this area were being made at the State Department. http://www.stanford.edu/group/west/cgi-bin/pager.php?id=49. A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz Industrial agriculture lost one of its greatest champions last week: Earl "Rusty" Butz, secretary of the USDA under. 0000009167 00000 n
Twitter, Follow us on I told him, You've got too many instant experts on agriculture in the White House They're brilliant people, but with no judgment. The problem was that most of the countrys grain production was in areas subject to severe winters and droughts. 0000062275 00000 n
Today Earl Butz would be 113 years old. Earl Butz. It was during this time that she first came into contact with drugs. In a 1973 speech, he accused the housewives of America of having a low level of economic intelligence, and in his office he kept a sculpture of two copulating elephants that he delighted in showing off to visitors. He is known for King Corn (2007), News 15 Nightbeat (1985) and Independent Lens (1999). The success of expansion-based policy became increasingly evident in the early twentieth century as American agriculture supported global markets and wartime needs. 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). Butz said: "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. 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. Ulrike Butz. in agriculture (1932) and a Ph. Indeed, the Agriculture Department has provided little support to those in other branches of the Government who have attempted to investigate the middlemen in the farmtomarket price spread and to probe the monopolies in the food industries, which include proces sors packagers, wholesalers, shippers, supermarkets. 0000051916 00000 n
Meanwhile, interest rates had spiked, making all of those loans farmers had taken out in the 70s into a paralyzing burden. The overall goal was to stop prices from falling too low (hurting farmers) or jumping too high (squeezing consumers). [29] He is buried at the Tippecanoe Memory Gardens in West Lafayette, Indiana. 0000008094 00000 n
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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. He is blamed for high food prices, accused of hurting small farmers and of playing politics with malnutrition and hunger and he is charged with disrupting the nation's foreign policy. 0000068736 00000 n
" Earl Butz 3. From the Associated Press. 0000046259 00000 n
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The man was a creep. They are disturbed, too, by the continued exchange of top personnel between the department and the big grain companies. The successes and failures of each installation of land and agricultural policy emphasize the understated influence each wave of policy has extended over American welfare. He exhorted farmers to ``plant fence row to fence row'' to meet global demand, helping to drive down surging food costs. A Cullman, Ala., contract grower whose attempt to organize poultry farmers was crushed by the processors (with some assistance, he charges, from the Agriculture Department) refers to his neighbors as the last slaves in America. Economic studies indicate that poultry farmers are kept in virtual bondage, forced into everincreasing debt as a condition for receiving each new contract from the processors, then working long days raising tens of thousands of companyowned chickens for pennies an hour. 0000063118 00000 n
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We need to reject the "go big or go . 0000057943 00000 n
"[11] Through a spokesman, he stated that media outlets had taken this portion of his statement out of their original context, which was that of retelling a joke. Earl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture in 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 Kensington, Md. The events that really led to Butz's predominance in the United States Government's internationalagriculture decisions began early last summer when it became clear the Russians would need grain. The abundancy associated with land expansion policies remained intrinsic to the nations success through World War I, as America provided for the home front and the allied nations. He brooked no dissent. Marshall Martin discusses policy with Earl Butz. All rights reserved. He graduated from Purdue University in West Lafayette in 1932. Providing a grand example of how his vision might work, Butz engineered a massive grain sale to the Soviets in 1972. Subsidized foods became less expensive, yet were higher in energy than unsubsidized crops such as fruits and vegetables, so Americans were financially inclined to purchase them. The Butz farm policy is one that involves risk. 10Despite a surplus of agricultural commodities, farmers increased production to compensate for low prices, worsening the imbalance of supply and demand and further devaluing their crops. Butz was not one of the smarter ones. 0000055445 00000 n
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. No. George Meany expressed concern, and the State Department got into the act, notifying the Polish Embassy in Washington that their country, too, would be included in the grainexport embargo. 0000008397 00000 n
He died in his sleep, a quiet end for a man whose career shook the earth, causing untold acres to succumb to the plow. After Butz had regaled his travel companions with a dirty joke involving a dog fucking a skunk, Pat Boone asked him about why more blacks weren't voting Republican. 0000047725 00000 n
And although the income of the big farm producers has risen substantially, the largest share of the increased prices of food has probably gone to the middlemen. He was 98. The establishment of farmland allowed for urban economies to flourish and more people to live in cities, and provided both food and work for Americas rapidly expanding population. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); A nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 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. He surely loved the way the biofuel boom has farmers worldwide scrambling to plant corn and soy and drench the earth with agrichemicals. To ensure bountiful food for the home front and the devastated allied nations, the government implemented price supports on crops. 0000041553 00000 n
But Butz did forcefully equate the interests of agribusiness with the national interest. And in 1971 as now, what agribusiness wanted was for farmers to plant lots and lots of corn and soy. Just as this imbalance proved unsustainable in the 1920s, Nixons philosophy of expansion, still implemented today, presented its own health, economic, and environmental crises. 0000041388 00000 n
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The analysis presented in that case cannot be limited to . After the Great Depression which featured the stunning confluence of huge grain surpluses, widespread hunger, and a tide of farm failures the Roosevelt Administration put in place mechanisms to help farmers manage supply.. Instagram, Follow us on Millions of hogs, cattle and chicken were sold for slaughter as producers reduced their inventories. 0000049217 00000 n
In 1972, the Soviet Union, suffering disastrous harvests, purchased 30 million tons of American grain. He was married to Mary Emma Powell. Valuating is itself the value and jewel of all valued things. 0000046066 00000 n
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. At an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland (sponsored by the Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER) on May 23, 1983, Butz warned his audience (concerning ethanol production and subsidies), "Those who ride the Tiger may find dismounting difficult". 0000028915 00000 n
Reading Eagle . He believed that a free, global market would bring higher prices, and for the few years that Russian agriculture struggled, he was right. It was 50 years ago that Butz, as a teenage boy, guided a horsedrawn plow over the fields of northern Indiana. 0000063920 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. 0000050347 00000 n
But domestic consumption was only 11 million tons greater; so the rest must be disposed of abroad. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy of the whole quotation to anyone who requested it; more than 3,000 readers did. 0000052132 00000 n
2027, 36 L.Ed.2d 912 (1973). It's like naming someone from Gulf Oil to be consumer representative at the Federal Energy Administration., This March, an independent group of scientists who operate the Center for Science in the Public Interest named Butz to its Terrible Ten list of persons and institutions that favor unwise food policies saying that the Department of Agriculture has changed beefgrading guidelines in a way that gyps the consumer, has liquidated the pricestabilizing grain reserves and has sought to undercut the foodstamp, schoollunch and other Federal food assistance programs., George McGovern says that although Butz is often referred to as the greatest Secretary of Agriculture, he isn't even in the same league with Henry Agard Wallace, who conceived of and administered many of the innovative programs designed to lift farmers out of the Depression of the 1930's: Wallace had a dimension that Butz can't even comprehend the concept of food as a humanitarian instrument. 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