During his leadership from 1964 to 1982, Premier Leonid Brezhnev made it official Soviet policy to maintain steady growth in the livestock industry. One Iowa land excavator told the Journal that farmers are trying to squeeze everything they can out of their land. 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. Today Earl Butz would be 113 years old. 0000011078 00000 n Butz, who once called Richard Nixon one of the greatest Americans of this century. now says he has very good rapport with Gerald Ford. 14. fanners were told: Reelect Nixon or Lose Your Butz. But it remains to he seen hew much help he can he. As intended, Nixons agricultural policy lowered food prices, but the imbalance of supply and demand manifested in long-term problems. The Land Ordinance of 1785 required states and Native Americans to cede land west of the Appalachian Mountains to Congress, who parceled it into townships of six miles square, and proceed to sell the townships, or fractional parts of townships at public venue. 1The act settled farmland, but high land prices prohibited many from venturing west. ), The feisty Earl Butz is now being drawn into Presidentialcampaign warfate as he was in 1972, when ??? As it turned out, nearly all the corn was bought by giants of the trade. He took his first federal post, as assistant agriculture secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower, serving 1954 to 1957. Earl L. BUTZ et al., Petitioners, v. Arthur N. ECONOMOU et al. 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. Agricultural policy has supported Americas greatest triumphs. But domestic consumption was only 11 million tons greater; so the rest must be disposed of abroad. 0000048447 00000 n 0000060447 00000 n The maritime unions seized the opportunity to press for more favorable shipping rates by refusing to load grain vessels bound for Russia. 0000051702 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. Earl Butz 0000063693 00000 n He has antagonized or alienated food shoppers, environmentalists, labor leaders, social reformers and religious and ethnic groups. It reduces the need to rely on other countries for corn production. Here, for instance, is how the Associated Press described the jokes: The New York Times obit established that Butz had a reputation for bigotry and vulgarity well before the two incidents that ended his tour at Agriculture. 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. 0000059437 00000 n 0000060715 00000 n 0000049595 00000 n In addition, consumer food prices jumped. Friedrich Nietzsche. Instagram, Follow us on 0000051916 00000 n According to this reader, Butz was not commenting onPope Paulsmoresweeping opposition to artificial contraception, which rendered his narrower opposition with regard to food shortages a foregone conclusion. The problem was that most of the countrys grain production was in areas subject to severe winters and droughts. YouTube. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. " He no playa the game, he no maka the rules. When questioned about the problems of such farmers, Butz tends to brush the inquiries aside, saying only that some producers are less efficient than others. 0000013599 00000 n This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Five years later, he pled guilty to tax evasion and served a short stint in jail. 0000043106 00000 n 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. 0000052349 00000 n Top 10 Earl Butz Quotes (2023 Update) - Quotefancy Top 10 Earl Butz Quotes (2023 Update) 1. 0000056798 00000 n With the grain reserve hollowed out and the drought impeding the 1973 harvest, grain prices jumped and farmers scrambled to plant as much as they could to take advantage. You Are What You Grow.. Grist is powered by WordPress VIP. Farm income stayed high for most of the decade. 0000059164 00000 n 0000043664 00000 n 0000060947 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 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. 0000009293 00000 n Butz drastically changed federal agricultural policy and re-engineered many New Deal-era farm support . 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. " Earl Butz 3. 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. A partial bibliography of sources is here. 0000065041 00000 n Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. 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. 0000008682 00000 n 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He was also fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $61,183 in civil penalties. Harvest failures came repeatedly and were usually severe. He had argued the issue before the White House Food Policy Group, then chaired by Kissinger, and thought he had converted everyone. 0000056400 00000 n And in 1971 as now, what agribusiness wanted was for farmers to plant lots and lots of corn and soy. 28 0 obj<>stream [12], News outlets revealed a racist remark he made in front of entertainers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the 1976 Republican National Convention. It defined settlement patterns, characterized Americas role in the global market, and navigated the country in and out of economic turmoil. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/bdsdcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(bdsdcc, Dimitri, Carolyn, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin. In 1973, he reduced the number of acres set aside or taken out of grain production from 25 million acres in 1972 to 7.4 million acres in 73. Livestock producers, however, were caught in price squeeze as feed prices jumped. 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. Surviving farms responded to low prices by planting more, hoping to make up on volume what they were losing on price. In the summer of 1972, the Soviets shook up the grain market when it hid from the world the fact that their grain harvest was in trouble. 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. [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. 0000041388 00000 n Earl Butz has restored grain farmers pride in proving their enormous productive potential, and they love him. x|kQO$c*M3Sj The Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973 (P.L. 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. From the Associated Press. 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. Butz attempted to end. Current agricultural policy has proved this as well, as America can no longer sustain the health and environmental implications of subsidy fueled factory farms. Agriculture expanded early American cities and fostered a booming urban population. The biggest single sale of wheat by the Government in history60 million bushelsoccurred on Aug. 31, 1972, to Continental Grain Company, one of the firms deal. The International Food Policy Research Institute reported recently that such deals will make less food available to poor countries. 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 does acknowledge, however, that his policy will work only if the United States remains grain exporter to the world. 26 0 obj<> endobj I recognize that family-oriented news organizations like the AP and the Times do not publish words they know to be coarse and deeply insulting to particular ethnic groups, nationalities, and religions. And so he got caught in a paradigm shift. After Butzwell, the jokes about gays limped along for awhile, but it finally sank in that racism and anti-Semitism would seldom be tolerated, even in private. By that time, farms were cranking out much more than the market could bear, and prices fell accordingly. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. this enabled the farm kids to do what? Then, in the 1980s, the bubble burst. Meanwhile, interest rates had spiked, making all of those loans farmers had taken out in the 70s into a paralyzing burden. 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. Secretary Earl Butz was the was the Secretary of Agriculture during President Nixon ' s term . 0000045340 00000 n We believe in widespread ownership of businesses and farmland. 0000059674 00000 n It gives farmers access to consistent income. The department's lax supervision of the grain exporters should have been known to Butz, because in the early 1970's the entire focus of expanding agricultural trade was on grain. [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. 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.

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