Yet Earl Lauer Butz is often referred to these days as the greatest Secretary of Agriculture in the history of the Republic. 0000067244 00000 n
Butz's critics also noted that he was a director of three large agribusiness corporations. Butz has been saved twice, by dry weather and by the Russians, said Representative Neal Smith, a Democrat from Iowa, referring to droughts in the American corn belt in 1974 and 1975 and to Soviet purchases of 16.5 million tons of grain from last year's crop and 2.2 million tons from the 1976 harvest. 0000043800 00000 n
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We believe in widespread ownership of businesses and farmland. . 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.. Exports sustained high grain prices, leading the United States Department of Agriculture to describe the years between 1910 and 1914 as the golden age of farming. He was married to Mary Emma Powell. He's not on the side of farmers or consumers. 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. Yet his legacy still thrives, and will not likely die as gently as the man. Earl Butz: Father of the Modern Food Subsidy System. It gives farmers access to consistent income. American Agricultural Economics Association, American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, American government official Earl Butz dies at age 98, "A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz", "Former Purdue Agriculture Dean Earl Butz dead at 98", "Earl L. Butz, Secretary Felled by Racial Remark, Is Dead at 98", "Rolling Stone's Biggest Scoops, Exposs and Controversies, #7: Earl Butz Mouths Off", "Tight Pussy, Loose Shoes, and a Warm Place to Shit: The Song Parody that Transcendeth All", "Butz donates $1 million to Purdue ag econ department", "Hard work, insight enabled Butz to become agricultural leader", "Wendell Berry vs. Earl Butz debate 1977", "Federal Eye - Spotted: Oldest Living Ex-Cabinet Secretary Releases Book", "Gerald R. Ford Administration Alumni | The Gerald Ford Presidential Foundation", "Meeting King Corn: Earl Butz was a product of his time" 2/19/2008, "The Butz Stops Here: A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz" 2/7/2008, Agri-Pulse article "Memories of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz" 2/10/2008, High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal article: "Memories of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz" 2/14/2008, Farm Futures article: "A Special Tribute to Earl Butz" 2/4/2008, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earl_Butz&oldid=1136081838, Purdue University College of Agriculture alumni, United States Department of Agriculture officials, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2013, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 28 January 2023, at 17:21. And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. Here's How. Butz . 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, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race. 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 . 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. He thinks using grain in foreign policy is really a fun game, one department official said of Kissinger. 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. 0000019559 00000 n
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He plunged a pitchfork into New Deal agricultural policies that sought to protect farmers from the big agribusiness companies whose interests he openly pushed. Earl 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. The McGovern US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs releases its Dietary Goals for the United States. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. 0000062821 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. The Center was founded on a different belief. We hit your inbox once a month and never abuse your personal information. Dont worry about overproduction, Butz told farmers on trips through the Midwest. 0000012251 00000 n
14. a. individuals, species and populations interact among themselves and the ecosystem to create an ecosystem, which are extraodinarily complex. 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. 0000049967 00000 n
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. 0000041553 00000 n
Earl Butz (1909-2008) American government official (1909-2008) - Earl Butz was born in Albion (town in Noble County, Indiana, USA) on July 3rd, 1909 and died in Washington, D.C. (capital city of the United States) on February 2nd, 2008 at the age of 98. He had argued the issue before the White House Food Policy Group, then chaired by Kissinger, and thought he had converted everyone. 0000009377 00000 n
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Homestead.html, The Library of Congress. Subsidy System. 0000047529 00000 n
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Overplowing land and failing to let it lay fallow resulted in exposed topsoil, which combined with drought caused severe dust storms resulting in one of the worst man-made ecological disasters in American history. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. He's a spokesman for the big corporate farmers, for the food processors and for the grocery people. Surviving farms responded to low prices by planting more, hoping to make up on volume what they were losing on price. 0000055830 00000 n
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. Earl Butz. [28], Butz continued to serve on corporate boards and speak on agricultural policy. accessLinx is a boutique multimedia production company that communicates your business's messgae with clarity and impact. He was featured in the documentary King Corn, recognized as the person who started the rise of corn production, large commercial farms, and the abundance of corn in American diets. 2023 U.S. History Scene, all rights reserved. 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. 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. 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. Farmstate Congressmen of both parties contend the chances are slim that farm supply and demand will remain in balance much longer and they want to cushion any drop in prices by increasing the current low Government price guarantees to farmers. Before Butz, there remained a snickering tolerance among the powerful for jokes denigrating the humanity of blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. To read Franklin D. Roosevelts Statement on Signing the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, click here. To ensure bountiful food for the home front and the devastated allied nations, the government implemented price supports on crops. 0000054470 00000 n
He said, I make no apology for my desire to raise farm prices.. 0000064563 00000 n
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It must have been satisfying for Butz to watch his vision come to life. Regaled with mountains of cut-rate corn, Archer Daniels Midland used its political muscle to rig up lucrative markets for high-fructose syrup and ethanol. 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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