0000057015 00000 n He dismantled supply management policies, selling off government storage bins . 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. His policies encouraged farmers to plant as much corn and other commodities as they could, o View the full answer Transcribed image text: Briefly explain the relationship of Earl Butz's food policy from 1973 to the meat that we eat today. ), The feisty Earl Butz is now being drawn into Presidentialcampaign warfate as he was in 1972, when ??? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. The smarter ones were even learning, albeit more slowly, not to believe such things. He had argued the issue before the White House Food Policy Group, then chaired by Kissinger, and thought he had converted everyone. 0000071573 00000 n He left both of the aforementioned posts in 1957, when he became the Dean of Agriculture at his alma mater, Purdue University. The Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973 (P.L. American President: James Monroe: The American Franchise. The University of Virginia. 0000064407 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. citation-type="booksimple" [2] He attended a one-room country school through eighth grade and graduated from high school in a class of seven. 19Dubbed the Great Grain Robbery, food prices in America soared. These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm. Grist is powered by WordPress VIP. 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. Earl Lauer "Rusty"[1] Butz was a United States government official who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. 0000018904 00000 n Earl Butz has been and continues to be a close personal friend and a man who loves his country and all that it represents. 0000067244 00000 n ), 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. Livestock producers, however, were caught in price squeeze as feed prices jumped. Author: Earl L. Butz The American Food Machine and Private Entrepreneurship Earl L. Butz | December 1977 The modern American Food Machine is perhaps the greatest single source of strength undergirding the unparalleled level of American living. 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. 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. "[11] A spokesman for Cardinal Cooke of the New York archdiocese demanded an apology, and the White House[11] requested that he apologize. 0000054470 00000 n 0000056400 00000 n 0000049595 00000 n " Earl Butz 2. 0000009293 00000 n 0000067068 00000 n To make the policy shift palatable in the Midwest, Butz needed to convince farmers that they werent risking a return to Depression-era conditions: vast overproduction, low prices, and foreclosures. And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. 0000052925 00000 n [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. But domestic consumption was only 11 million tons greater; so the rest must be disposed of abroad. 0000051337 00000 n I went to Syria. 0000043465 00000 n 0000053719 00000 n Butz has passed on, but fence-row-to-fence-row agriculture and its vast environmental footprint lives. [4] In his time heading the USDA, Butz drastically changed federal agricultural policy and re-engineered many New Deal-era farm support programs. 0000058905 00000 n 14. He's on the side of people who buy from farmers and sell to consumers.. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. At that time, the Russian grain purchase of 1972 was the largest grain deal between two nations in history, and it set in motion a host of changes that would dominate agricultural history for at least the next two decades. The outrage over Butzs joke was, of course, entirely appropriate. Earl L. Butz 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. Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture. 0000065488 00000 n America's total grain production of 242 million tons in 1975 represented an increase of 81 million tons from what it was in 1961. They werent a secret at the time of Butzs firing; Time magazine reported them, albeit with some dashes substituting for letters in the dirtiest words, in full. series; Purdue officials responded that he had grown too frail. " Earl Butz 4. Increased production contributed to deforestation, higher emissions of greenhouse gases, and a greater need for fertilizer and pesticides that contaminated water sources and accumulated in the food chain. But you've got to make choices, and you're not going to be right all the time. A publication of Hillsdale College Over 6,200,000 Readers Recent Posts 0000067829 00000 n 0000043106 00000 n trailer 0000041223 00000 n " Sometimes my quotes may be too colorful. He was also fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $61,183 in civil penalties. On October 4, 1976, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over an obscene joke he'd made that was derogatory to blacks.You. Butz had helped to arrange that sale in the hope of giving a boost to crop prices to bring restive farmers tempted to vote for George McGovern into the Republican fold.[10]. All rights reserved. 0000061181 00000 n This program had unsuccessfully attempted to prevent a national oversupply of corn and low corn prices. The McGovern US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs releases its Dietary Goals for the United States. In the chart below, it looks like there was an unprecedented spike in corn prices in 2008. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. (In a priceless scene in the excellent recent documentary King Corn, the narrators visit the aged Butz at his Purdue perch. . Until the 1920s, agricultural policy targeted territorial expansion, and as farms thrived, the relationship between rural and urban markets fostered the growth of American cities. 1976-1977. 0000054849 00000 n %%EOF HTPn0Stv4$>Pv@k'@zGq3(:nfd"qlPUByCzv#Ru {!:|A3hrM[6J)V>w7W]Z |H >dO o?j And the best way to become a Senator is to get on TV and demagogue the food issue.. Philpott describes farm policy from the 1930s until Butz as a sort of Nirvana for both farmers and consumers, as it paid farmers not to farm and kept corn prices high. At the time, Butz served as a board member for several agribiz firms, including Ralston Purina, then a sprawling food conglomerate. It took a while to convert President Ford and Butz's remarks about that are revealing of the manner of this man who has become the nation's top agriculture policy maker: I told the President that a year ago we had the whole Midwest in the palm of our hand and we piddled it away with interference with grain exports. 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. 0000048818 00000 n We believe in widespread ownership of businesses and farmland. 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. 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. Earl Butz, who served as Secretary of Agriculture under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, is widely regarded as a pioneer in modern American corn policy because he emphasized selling . If the price of that change was a slightly elevated reluctance within the mainstream press to explain fully what brought it about, maybe that isnt so terrible. But the man likes confrontation, and uses it to disarm his critics. He has antagonized or alienated food shoppers, environmentalists, labor leaders, social reformers and religious and ethnic groups. After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. Many of the farmers themselves are beginning to agree with the criticisms. 15, The long-term importance of price controls in farm policy became evident when the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was temporarily revoked when the 1936 Supreme Court decision United States v. Butler ruled the act unconstitutional. I got a royal welcomenot because I was Secretary of Agriculture. 0000043664 00000 n Providing a grand example of how his vision might work, Butz engineered a massive grain sale to the Soviets in 1972. You're working for yourselves, because you're trying to make a little money and save some of it. The 12,500 members of the American Farm Bureau Federation to whom he addressed those remarks recently in Indianapolis roared their approval. 0000065041 00000 n Patron saint of the Fast Food Nation, Butz lived to see his dream realized. 0000070684 00000 n Nixons Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz favored increased agricultural exports, and allowed the grain trading companies to continue to receive subsidies on the price and transportation of the Russian grain stocks to seaports. Ulrike Butz, daughter of television presenter Hermann Butz, grew up in the Bavarian district of Miesbach. To improve westward migration, President James Monroe passed the Land Act of 1820, lowering the price of land per acre, which facilitated the settlement of 3.5 million acres. Subsidy System. Reading Eagle . His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs. 0000068205 00000 n why was it used? By artificially increasing demand for food, food production became more efficient and drove down the cost of food for everyone. American land policy began in the wake of the Revolutionary War, designed to bolster agricultural production to support the expanding nation. They are disturbed, too, by the continued exchange of top personnel between the department and the big grain companies. He died still holding an emeritus position at Purdue. %PDF-1.4 % 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. Butz died in his sleep on February 2, 2008, in Kensington, Maryland. 0000042932 00000 n 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. The New Deal policymakers had seen how high-production agriculture could devastate lands productivity. 25 The rise of factory farms that grew specialized crops subsidized by the government presented environmental troubles as well. 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. 0000046978 00000 n Earl L. Butz was born on July 3, 1909 in Albion, Indiana, USA. Then, in the 1980s, the bubble burst. Butz decided that America could sell them 10 million tons right away, then embargo further shipments but possibly resume them in September after the effects of this country's drought could he more accurately gauged. 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. He went on a speaking tour and encouraged farmers to plant fence row to fence row to meet global demand. 0000052562 00000 n 0000050144 00000 n [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. Surviving farms responded to low prices by planting more, hoping to make up on volume what they were losing on price. [4] They were married on December 22, 1937. He believed that a free, global market would bring higher prices, and for the few years that Russian agriculture struggled, he was right. As their desperation grew, farmers failed to practice sustainable farming methods, which exasperated the Dust Bowl. 0000069545 00000 n 0000061644 00000 n Earl L. Butz, the outspoken U.S. Agriculture secretary forced from office in 1976 for making a racist joke, died Saturday morning. He died on February 2, 2008 in West Lafayette, Indiana. After forty years of regulating production to balance demand, domestic and international circumstances compelled President Richard Nixon to rethink agricultural policy. It later was shown that, with help from Continental officials, Palmby was making arrangements for establishing his residence in New York, where Continental's headquarters is, even before he went to Russia. 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. President Abraham Lincoln promoted expansion when he passed the Homestead Act in 1862. 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. 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. 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. 0000070129 00000 n I tried to interview him last fall for Grists Sow What? 0000066862 00000 n 0000049770 00000 n this enabled the farm kids to do what? There are those who regard him as the leader of the Great American Farm Revolution, those who regard him as Gerald Ford's greatest political asset, and there are political experts who can't decide whether Jimmy Carter is being smart or being dumb when he says he would dump Butz if he were elected President. 0000008397 00000 n It was during this time that she first came into contact with drugs. 0000063406 00000 n 9As prices of agricultural commodities soared, farmers maximized production to increase their profits. So if youre tempted to feel sorry for the guy for getting torn up by historical forces he never understood, give it a rest. Earl Butz I challenged things that needed to be challenged at Purdue. 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. 2027, 36 L.Ed.2d 912 (1973). He does acknowledge, however, that his policy will work only if the United States remains grain exporter to the world. Rather, this reader says, Butz was making a coarse and simpleminded joke about the popes own celibacy. Facebook, Follow us on Butz said to be furious, but took no steps to stop such shifting. It defined settlement patterns, characterized Americas role in the global market, and navigated the country in and out of economic turmoil. But he endured personal humiliation along the way. 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. Donate today tohelp keep Grists site and newsletters free. 0000066617 00000 n [17][18], In any case, according to The Washington Post, anyone familiar with Beltway politics could "have not the tiniest doubt in [their] mind[s] as to which cabinet officer" uttered it. Many were dismayed the government paid farmers not to plant and even destroy crops while much of the country struggled to purchase food and waited in line at soup kitchens. But Butz did forcefully equate the interests of agribusiness with the national interest. 0000064816 00000 n What policy did he promote in 1973? Jesse Jackson learned the latter lesson in 1984 when a black reporter for the Washington Post passed along to another reporter the news that hed heard Jackson refer to Jews in private as Hymie, and refer to New York City as Hymietown.. 0000060447 00000 n 0000071399 00000 n 0000029636 00000 n Dean reports that this was Butz's response: I'll tell you what the coloreds want. Butz's critics also noted that he was a director of three large agribusiness corporations. [16], The reference in Time was to John Dean's article published in Rolling Stone issue #223. 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. 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. 0000029849 00000 n 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. Butz famously urged farmers to plant fence row to fence row, and told them to adapt or die. 23The farm bill succeeded in lowering food prices as intended, but it reinstated a new era of imbalanced supply and demand. Under the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, Roosevelt passed the inaugural farm bill, which subsidized farmers to limit their production. [4] He was the uncle of American football player Dave Butz. 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. 0000041732 00000 n But over the years not unlike his political patron, Nixon he returned to respectability. 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. Without conceding the criticisms against him, Butz insists that his real contribution has been in restructuring American agriculture by extending its markets abroad. He wanted all this done without fanfare but lost control when Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns predicted the sales would drive American food prices higher. 0000060947 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. 8 Due to government assistance, American farmers experienced continued success during and immediately following World War I. Earl L. Butz, Self: King Corn. 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. [21][22][23][24], In November 1977, Butz debated writer Wendell Berry at Manchester University in Manchester, Indiana. 0000040918 00000 n The International Food Policy Research Institute reported recently that such deals will make less food available to poor countries. 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. President Franklin Delano Roosevelts passing of the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment enacted an unprecedented and highly successful approach to agricultural policy that defined farming for four decades. 1. 0000047725 00000 n Butz fanned their frenzy. The policy sometimes paid farmers to not grow food in order to keep agricultural prices high and allow small farms to survive. The Center was founded on a different belief. This became evident during the Great Depression through the need to move away from expansion policy, and later in the 1970s when Nixon and Butz sought to reduce food prices. Farm incomes plunged and tens of thousands of farms went under. 0000066173 00000 n 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. Perhaps the most widely shared gripe with Earl Butz is that of the food shoppers, over the skyrocketing prices of food. 26 206 0000049017 00000 n http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Homestead.html, The Library of Congress. I mustadmit that this interpretation, which eluded me for 34 years, is much more in keeping with a sense of humor animated by the loose-shoes joke and by a sculpture of two copulating elephants. But, if you hit the button that adjusts prices for inflation, there is was a huge spike in corn prices after the Russian grain purchase. xref 0000065262 00000 n Ford discusses many of the painful decisions he had to make during his presidencyincluding the firing of Earl Butz. Butz . Then they made secret deals with the five biggest American grain companies for 24.2 million tons of grain worth almost $1.5 billion in 1972 dollars $7.6 billion in 2009 dollars. 0000043800 00000 n Now, with 61 million more acres in production, subsidy payments have fallen to about $500 millionmostly to cotton, peanut, rice and tobacco growers. " He no playa the game, he no maka the rules. how much corn is grown with this fertilizer? Watch Environmental Catastrophe on PBS. Yet his legacy still thrives, and will not likely die as gently as the man. 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 . Last year, they harvested 1.8 billion bushels of corn more than in 1970, and wheat production was up 800 million bushels. 0000046462 00000 n . in agriculture (1932) and a Ph. Earl Butz While he was president, it was popular to be a Nixon hater. Your support keeps our unbiased, nonprofit news free. 0000061409 00000 n 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.. He surely loved the way the biofuel boom has farmers worldwide scrambling to plant corn and soy and drench the earth with agrichemicals. Agriculture expanded early American cities and fostered a booming urban population. Expansion efforts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in western migration that led to agricultural prosperity in rural areas. 0000029565 00000 n Secretary of Agriculture. Earl Butz Ford was warm and friendly. 26 0 obj<> endobj 0000008170 00000 n How does corn get in your hair King corn? The changes implemented since the eighteenth century exemplify the need to reform policy in accordance with domestic and international circumstances. He brooked no dissent. As usual, the country dealers and farmers of Iowa got the short end of the stick, says former Iowa Senator Harold Hughes. 0000049217 00000 n 0000018253 00000 n Although not featured prominently in history books, American land and agricultural policy laid the groundwork for the countrys geographic, political, and economic development. naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/CAT87210025/PDF, Bittman, Mark, Dont End Agricultural Subsidies, Fix Them., United States v. Butler. Legal Information Institute. His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs. But Butz's good luck, if it is that, may be running out, because of the lush, recordshattering crop growing in the Midwest. support in the Midwest. Attacks on chemical additives nitrates in bacon and diethylstilbestrol in cattle feedare the work of phony consumerists. Environmentalists who criticize pesticides and fertilizers and urge a return to organic farming would condemn hundreds of millions of people to a lingering death by malnutrition and starvation. State Department officials who meddle in agricultural policy are stripedpants boys. And Congressmen who say food prices are too high are demagogues. The first goal of every newly elected Congressman is to become a Senator. Design and build by Upstatement. In 1948, Butz became vice president of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and three years later was named to the same post at the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. 0000044154 00000 n Butz, who dismisses Foreman as a phony and an arm of the Democratic Party, says consumer groups are wrong. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Under which American president did the deregulation of the food industry coincide with the growth of agribusiness and in particular big corn?