SAY A GOOD WORD
FOR AGRICULTURE
Why Farming Needs a Real Job Of Public Relations — Some
Basic Facts On The Real Greatness Of The American Farmer.
J f you are planning to be around for a while, say until the century’s
end, less than four decades from now, I’ll be greatly obliged if
you’ll do me something of a favor. Will you check on what is being
written and said then, around the year 2000? Will you keep an
eye on the press and television and give radio a sufficiently atten
tive ear to make sure whether farming and farmers are, finally,
fiven the great credit they have earned? That’s what I want to
now — whether, at long, long last the American public finally
wakened to what a magnificent job the farming people of the coun
try were doing to keep a population of more than 180 million people
extremely well fed.
SOMETHING TO DO ABOUT IT
Meantime, while you keep an eye and an ear on the situation,
there’s something you can do about it. Something “we” can do, if
you’ll let me labor alongside you. This “something” is the most
neglected fact in farming. It’s simply “saying a good word for agri
culture” — saying it, loud and clear, wherever and whenever we can.
Industry and organized labor call this “saying a good word” public
relations. It includes anything, from keeping lobbyists in Washing
ton to carrying a favorable news item to a local editor. It includes
advertising of many kinds and, quite as necessary, a willingness to
speak up at the right time and place.
A LOOK AT THE PICTURE
Since farm people make up less than 10 per cent of the nation’s
population total, it’s important to know what the other 90 per cent
think. Once almost all Americans were farmers. They lived on the
soil, produced their food and contrived their clothing. But that
didn’t last long. Soon there were “butchers and bakers and candle
stick makers” and a lot else. People went to town, leaving a smaller
and smaller percentage of the population on farms. By 1930 only
about one-fourth of us were producers of food and fiber.
About this time the production revolution struck Agriculture,
speeding up the trek to town. Now only one of each eleven Ameri
cans is a food producer. By 1975, very probably, only one out of
twenty will be on the land — nineteen of each twenty in the city!
Even now fewer than ten million of us are farmers; more than one
hundred and seventy million of us aren’t. No reason to wonder at
the spread of the idea of agriculture as a decadent industry.
SOMETIME: ONE MILLION TOP FARMERS
Sit in a cityman’s chair. Watch the parade of statistics testifying
to the continuing decline in the number of farms in the United
States. So recently as 1940 there were six million — large, small and
in between; good, bad and indifferent. Now there are fewer than
four million, less than two-thirds as many. And economists assert
we may one day have as few as two million farms and one million
of them will produce 90% of our food and fiber. The city man hears
this small angle of the story, reads of the dwindling number of
farms and concludes, all too frequently, that Uncle Sam is just about
out of the farming business.
WHAT A STORY!
Farming going out of business? Hardly. It has assets of more
than $208 billion. That’s billions! Of this total, $128,200,000,000 is
in farm real estate. Agriculture’s gross income in 1960 was more
than $45,000,000,000. Farmers spend around $40 billion annually.
Whatever business Mr. Cityman is in, that $40 billion is important
to him. It is vital in keeping the national economy right side up.
Of the $40 billion, about twenty-five are spent in producing the
nation’s food and fiber; fifteen for living. Merchants have a keen
appreciation of such buying power as that.
THE ANSWER IS EFFICIENCY
Total farm production in 1960 set a new high record. Never
before have American farms turned out so vast a harvest. That’s
despite fewer farms and fewer farmers. In fact, in no place on earth
in all history have so few men produced so much. Efficiency! Pro
duction per man and per man hour is beyond the comprehension
of anyone a short decade ago. Yet we permit such a record to be
accepted as casual, almost commonplace. It isn’t — not by a very
long shot. But we have not let people know what a spectacularly
wonderful record it is. One item: After a very slow spring in 1960,
when another kind of men might have despaired of ever getting
a com crop in, a total of 82,117,000 acres was harvested. In 1944
we put in 10 million acres more but the 1960 crop was 40 per cent
higger than that cribbed 16 years earlier. Efficient production.
CLEAREST PICTURE OF ALL
Consumers can understand the relative low cost of the “food
market basket — the government’s estimate of the food needs of
a family of five for a month. You can figure that out in terms of
your own household. Have a look at this:
Back in 1920, forty years ago, the average factory worker spent
the earnings from 120 hours for food for his family for a month.
By 1930 he had to put in only 91 hours to pay for a month’s food
bill. Very good. By 1940 food was really low in cost, in terms of
labor, for a month’s food expense required wages from only 57 hours.
That’s quite wonderful. You’ll go a long way trying to find another
country where food consumers “have it so good.” But the past twenty
years have made the food picture even brighter for city people —
for everyone who eats! Government data for 1960, the latest, reveal
this extraordinary fact: The average city worker can now use the
income from only 39 hours of work to pay his family food bill for
a month! Groceries and meat and milk — all food — for a month
in exchange for the income from 39 hours’ work. For the day’s food,
less than VA hours of labor — about 78 minutes!
No place else in all the world does food cost so little, in terms
of wages — an impossible situation except for our remarkably abun
dant production of food. That is, except for the very wonderful con
tribution by the farmers of our country. When we in America fully
realize the basic national asset enjoyed in our agriculture, we will
acclaim the farmer from our housetops — we will rise up and call
him blessed.
At about this point it may appear logical to call for a big pro
motion campaign for agriculture — even for a government program.
Certainly the subject warrants whatever may be required to waken
public consciousness to a realization of the country’s great good for
tune in its farm resources. But let’s start this effort here at home,
with the farmer himself, the businessmen who serve and help him,
the rest of us whose future is in Rural America. Let’s ALL of us
speak up for Agriculture, anywhere, anytime. There could hardly
be a more pleasant assignment than that — certainly no other insti
tution is more deserving — no other has waited longer.
So, I’ll be greatly obliged if you’ll do me something of a favor.
Watch, to see when Agriculture begins “to come into its own” with
the public. Watch for proof, in press and radio and television, that
the importance of the farmer is recognized. In the meantime, don’t
neglect, you, yourself, to “say a good word for Agriculture.”
Many of you have known Lloyd Burling
ham over the years as a farm news com
mentator and will need no introduction to
the writer of this article. You will recognize
the sincerity, the good common sense, the
easy prose style and the great love for agri
culture which characterize tliis man. For
those not as well acquainted, here are a few
facts about him. His appearance is shown
by the picture at the right. In spite of long
hours and hard work in radio and TV, Lloyd
bears his years lightly. He has always main
tained an essential humanity and sense of
humor which have sustained him well.
Farm raised in Linn County, Iowa, he at
tended Iowa State College and University
of Missouri. He has operated farms (still
does), written for and published farm mag
azines, managed the National Dairy Exposi
tion, broadcast for many years on behalf of
many of the biggest names in agriculture.
Probably no one in this country is better
qualified to speak up for the farmer.