Evening star., 1950-02-18
"UnhoIy and UnjustifiobIe"

No matter how one looks at it, the potato
situation obviously adds up to a nonsensical
fantasy rivaling anything to be found in Alice's
topSy-turvy Wonderland. But though it has its
comic side, there is no real fun in 1t for either
the taxpaying American consumer, the Federal
officials involved or intelligent agriculturalists
dncluding their representatives in Congress) who
rightly regard it a scandal that threatens to
undermine the basicaly necessary over all pro-
gram for the support of farm prices.
In effect, stated with some oversimpifcation
the situation is one in which the grower earns
handsome Federal reward for doing precisely
what the Government has been urging him not
to do In other words, he has an advance guar
antee that If he overproduces potatoes-even
when he knows there is no market for an excess
he will profit. There is no risk in it for him; he
will still receive good price for something that
there is too much of already. The guarantee, of
course, is fixed by law. Under that law, he can
count on getting a certain minimum for his
spuds. If he cannot get it from the consumer,
then Washington will give it to him by buying
up his surplus at high figure Git has averaged
$1S5 per 100 pounds) and then selling the whole
business back to him for penny per 100, on
condition that he use it for fertilizer or livestock
feed.
AS far as the American consumer is con-
cerned, this program may well be described as
one that has added insult to injury. The injury
is this: That he has been forced to pay
potato price so artficially high, and so much out
of line with the economic law of supply and
demand, that food brokers in many Eastern cities
Gncluding this one) are now importing tubers
from Canada at cost considerably below that
of shipments from Maine. As for the insult-an
insult to the intelligence-it consists of the fact
that the average citizen besides being thus
penalized in the market place. must fork over
taxes to support the system that imposes the
penalty. To date, according to Agriculture Sec
retary Brannan, the Government-which means
the taxpaying publc-has lost about a half billion
dollars trying to make the thing work, but the
results just seem to get crazier and crazier.
Indeed, the results have been so bad that
Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas has now been
moved to describe the subsidies involved as being
nothing less than "unholy and unjustifable"-a
least to the extent that they are granted without
adequate controls over production Under present
law, the only control in operation provides for
limitation on acreage, but the growers have cir
cumvented this, and doubled their output per
acre, by an intensified use of fertilizers and by
planting rows closer together. Accordingly, with
the overwhelming backing Of the Committee on
Agriculture, Mr. Lucas is pressing for action to at
tach to the House approved cotton bill rider to
deprive the 1850 crop of all price supports unless
strict marketing quotas are in effect. Along with
others, he is pressing also for additional checks
to deal with the long-range problem of potato
surpluses
Certainly, the situation cries aloud for cor
rective action. Like our agricultural products in
general, the lowly spud may have to have some
form of continuing support. But the present
system-Which serves an incentive to over
production-is plainly too cockeyed to be toler-
ated much longer