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). An Administration official who has watched Butz during such White (louse meetings says, He's very quick, which is important in the infighting, And he knows how to lose battles so he can win wars. (One early victory was his outmaneuvering Nixon Administration economic planners so as to get the farmers and their products excluded from price controls. Then, during President Fords election campaign of 1976, Butz told a racially offensive joke, and he was forced to resign. Grist is powered by WordPress VIP. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. 0000051337 00000 n
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. In 1970, the Government was paying farmers $3.7 billion in subsidies, mostly as an incentive not to plant. I told him, You've got too many instant experts on agriculture in the White House They're brilliant people, but with no judgment. 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. He thinks using grain in foreign policy is really a fun game, one department official said of Kissinger. 0000043664 00000 n
This program had unsuccessfully attempted to prevent a national oversupply of corn and low corn prices. 0000068573 00000 n
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Overall farm income jumped along with grain prices, from $2.3 billion in 1972 to $19.6 billion in '73. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window). Republican Senators in Kansas and Oklahoma warned President Ford's political advisers that they had better do something to prevent losing traditional G.O.P. He also came up with a weakly worded proposal to Congress to strengthen criminal penalties and minimize conflict of interest in inspection agencies, some of which had been owned by the same grain firms whose products they inspected. He then returned to Purdue and was dean of the School of Agriculture for the next 10 years.. But New Times magazine enterprisingly sleuthed out Butz's identity by checking the itineraries of all Cabinet members. We believe in widespread ownership of businesses and farmland. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy of the whole quotation to anyone who requested it; more than 3,000 readers did. Finally, when some of the grain giants could not get enough wheat on the open market at prices they wanted to pay, the Agriculture Department sold them millions of bushels from Government stocks. x|kQO$c*M3Sj He was also fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $61,183 in civil penalties. 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. By killing the supply management program, Butz would open a floodgate of cheap inputs from farms to food factories. 0000053560 00000 n
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Ulrike Butz, daughter of television presenter Hermann Butz, grew up in the Bavarian district of Miesbach. Urged on by Butz and buoyed by high grain prices, millions of Midwestern farmers spent the 1970s taking on debt to buy more land, bigger and more complicated machines, new seed varieties, more fertilizers and pesticides, and generally producing as much as they possibly could. 0000069937 00000 n
But Butz did forcefully equate the interests of agribusiness with the national interest. Eating for Strength . In, Pollan, Michael. Agriculture expanded early American cities and fostered a booming urban population. 0000069741 00000 n
These policy shifts coincided with the rise of major agribusiness corporations, and the declining financial stability of the small family farm. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/bdsdcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(bdsdcc, Dimitri, Carolyn, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin. He was 98. The Secretary tells American farmers that high price guarantees, or supports, would lead you backward to the days when Government controls dictated what you planted and how much, and in the long run, lead to overproduction. Farm costs, per unit of production, then would rise. 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. 0000049017 00000 n
October 11th, 2021. I fear he may be right. 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. The outrage over Butzs joke was, of course, entirely appropriate. Ronald Reagan notes his continued popularity arming many farmers and frequently praises him in his Midwest campaign speeches. 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. It was also epochal. Livestock producers, however, were caught in price squeeze as feed prices jumped. 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. 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. 26 206
Five years later, he received Purdue's first doctorate in . All rights reserved. In addition, consumer food prices jumped. Butz said to be furious, but took no steps to stop such shifting. fanners were told: Reelect Nixon or Lose Your Butz. But it remains to he seen hew much help he can he. 93-86, also known as the 1973 U.S. Farm Bill) was the 4-year farm bill that adopted target prices and deficiency payments as a tool that would support farm income but reduce forfeitures to the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) of surplus stocks. 0000008094 00000 n
Earl L. Butz, the outspoken U.S. Agriculture secretary forced from office in 1976 for making a racist joke, died Saturday morning. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Later, as technological innovations increased crop yields and international demand declined, policy curtailed production to regulate supply and demand. The policy of prohibiting permanent roads and of restricting commercial logging in accordance with the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act was continued. They are disturbed, too, by the continued exchange of top personnel between the department and the big grain companies. Though many experts say he's whistling in the dark, he is predicting that bumper crops will be absorbed. In other words, plow up and plant every bit of land you can get your tractor on. 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(. Describe that change. They pointed out that he was leaving the board of Ralston Purina Company to become Secretary of Agriculture, while Hardin was departing the Agriculture Department to become vice chairman of the same firm. 0000048818 00000 n
The Dustbowl that ensued temporarily eradicated farming from Americas most fertile lands, threatening the countrys ability to provide. It is possible, too, that domestic food prices would drop, although, because of the middleman factor, that is far from certain. The success of expansion-based policy became increasingly evident in the early twentieth century as American agriculture supported global markets and wartime needs. 0000008903 00000 n
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The changes implemented since the eighteenth century exemplify the need to reform policy in accordance with domestic and international circumstances. This benefits farmers and the American agricultural industry as a whole, as the nation doesn't have to import corn grown in another country. They include the discovery of inorganic chemical inputs, mechanization, specialization . 0000007619 00000 n
The "Great Grain Robbery" was not really a robbery, but it was a major turning point in the history of agricultural monitoring.. So if youre tempted to feel sorry for the guy for getting torn up by historical forces he never understood, give it a rest. I was a stubborn cuss, and I made some mistakes. 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. 0000059949 00000 n
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[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. 0000042400 00000 n
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 . Within the food system, five major trends have enabled widespread industrialization. [9], 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. Myth: Earl Butz was a pivotal figure. Harvest failures came repeatedly and were usually severe. He plunged a pitchfork into New Deal agricultural policies that sought to protect farmers from the big agribusiness companies whose interests he openly pushed. 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. 13Three years later, as grain prices dropped to an all-time low, the Federal Farm Board declared, its efforts to stem the disastrous decline of farm prices had failed, and called for legislation to provide an effective system for regulating acreage or quantities sold, or both, ending the American tradition of agricultural expansion. 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. 24 Since subsidized crops are less expensive, and therefore more sought after, farmers who grew subsidized crops saw the most success, while those who did not fell behind. They are making money nowand it was Butz who was there when the going got good. 0000029636 00000 n
When prices threatened to go too high, the payments would end and the land would go back into cultivation. In order to plant fence row to fence row, farmers tore out shelter belts and other conservation land uses. 0000054680 00000 n
A Des Moines Register poll indicated last year that less than half of Iowa farmers thought Butz was doing a good job, and some farm leaders regard Iowa as a bellwether. He was married to Mary Emma Powell. Actually. 0000070129 00000 n
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Beginning in 1973, policy changes promoted by Nixon Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz deregulated the corn market. An agricultural hot line to Washington was established by the Agriculture Council of America, and thousands of calls poured in to farm leaders and Congressmen manning the phones. He had argued the issue before the White House Food Policy Group, then chaired by Kissinger, and thought he had converted everyone. Earl Butz stayed on as Secretary of Agriculture after Nixon was impeached and engineered legislation sharply reducing federal subsidies for farmers. Dean reports that this was Butz's response: I'll tell you what the coloreds want. Butz's motto became "get big or get out," encouraging the growth of corporate factory-farms and increasing subsidised production of staples for export. www.ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf, Atkin, Michael, Grain in the Global Political Economy. In, Henderson, G.C.. Notes and Memoranda: The Agricultural Credits Act of 1923., Rasmussen, Wade, Gladys Baker, and James Ward. [3], Butz was an alumnus of Purdue University, where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. 0000013599 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. 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. 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. %%EOF
[4] In 1968, he was promoted to the positions of Dean of Education and vice president of the university's research foundation. 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. 0000046815 00000 n
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Help us continue to bring you the best of the archives without the dust! 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. 0000056798 00000 n
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. Marshall Martin discusses policy with Earl Butz. (For a blunt account of the farm-crisis period, see Osha Gray Davidsons 1996 classic Broken Heartland: The Rise of Americas Rural Ghetto.). Butz, who once called Richard Nixon one of the greatest Americans of this century. now says he has very good rapport with Gerald Ford. 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. 0000043106 00000 n
Others bowdlerized the quote, in some cases replacing the female genital reference with "a tight [obscenity]" and the scatological reference with "a warm place to [vulgarism]" or "warm toilet seats". Yet Earl Lauer Butz is often referred to these days as the greatest Secretary of Agriculture in the history of the Republic. Actress: Swedish Lessons in Love. Farm income has shot up from $14 billion in 1970 to $26 billion now, and even after these figures are adjusted for inflation, they still reflect a nearly 20 percent increase. 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. 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. 0000055062 00000 n
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. It was 50 years ago that Butz, as a teenage boy, guided a horsedrawn plow over the fields of northern Indiana. A partial bibliography of sources is here. 0000061873 00000 n
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