Ezra Taft Benson is possibly the best Secretary of Agriculture this nation ever had. The job has never been as difficult, nor as thankless. Benson has put the good of the nation above selfish temporary advantage for farmers. But Benson is a statesman; he is not an author. His new book, Freedom to Farm (Doubleday, $3.95), is largely a factual, non-partisan history of organized agriculture in America, of interest mostly to libraries and professional agricultural people.
“Price-support programs,” the Secretary points out, “mean little to the small-scale farmer [more than half our farmers] with not much to sell. If he got several times the present level of price supports, it would not make much difference to him. He still would not have enough at the end of the season for the kind of living all of us should have in America. This entire program hardly touches the problem of rural poverty. . . . The present price-support system was designed to help commercial farmers.” There is no doubt that ever since there has been a farm program the rich have gotten the gravy, because when the government gravy bowl runs over, the rich have spoons and the poor have forks.
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