By the late 1970s, AAM farmers took the position that, as an atomistic group of small family farmers, they could not effectively compete with the concentration of economic power wielded when corporations and governments controlled both the price they received for their goods, and the price they paid for their inputs. They believed that as a last resort, the government should use its central authority to establish a parity between prices received and costs of inputs. Returning to the March 1979 meeting in the White House, as the discussion began, I decided that we should go right to the heart of the matter. I posed the following question to Eizenstat. Stuart Eizenstat was somewhat taken aback by my question and hesitated before responding.
Agriculture is too important and vital a resource to be left in the hands of individual farmers.
I was as much taken aback by Eizenstat's response as he was by my question. The full meaning and consequences of central planning authority had finally reached home with me. It was with this concept firmly planted in our minds that I and others began extensive research into the history of central planning and the influence of economic combinations, especially corporations, on the origination and use of the central planning power of government.