Thorn of Plenty

The Administration last week called in an expert food salesman to help move a mountain. The expert: lean-jawed Clarence Francis, 65, who will retire next month as board chairman of General Foods Corp. (Maxwell House coffee, Birds Eye frozen foods, Swans Down cake mixes, etc.). The mountain: the Government's vast and growing stocks of surplus agricultural products, which now total $2.7 billion. Francis took over a White House desk as presidential adviser on surpluses and chairman of a new interdepartmental committee on disposal plans.

Getting rid of farm surpluses, even in the form of gifts, is a tough job, despite the fact that many of the world's people are on the brink of starvation. At home and abroad, farmers and merchants are quick to protest cut-rate sales or giveaway programs that push down local prices. Accordingly, the surpluses have to be distributed outside normal trade channels.-In the U.S. the Agriculture Department expects to give away $170 million worth of surplus food this year to state welfare agencies and school-lunch programs. Now Washington is discussing plans to provide free food for similar programs abroad. Another idea is to barter farm surplus for goods and services that the U.S. Government would otherwise have to pay for in dollars. This week Japan signed an agreement to take $40 million worth of surplus food in part payment for U.S. purchases of arms and ammunition under the offshore procurement program (see below). The Agriculture Department has already got rid of $75 million in food in several such barter deals. Recently the department traded surplus food for European fertilizer to send to the U.S. Army engineers for use in Korea.

A lot of farmers in the old Kansas-Nebraska-Oklahoma-Colorado dust bowl were worrying about a lack of wheat, not a surplus. In the last fortnight, storms have again covered farms in the drought-stricken bowl with blankets of dust. Colorado's Republican Governor Dan Thornton pointed out that there would be no dust bowl if good grazing lands, anchored by tough, tangled grass roots, had not been plowed up to plant wheat under the incentive of Government-supported high prices. Said he: "High prices guaranteed for wheat have ... led to plowing up . . . land which never should have been cultivated."

-*Foodman Francis can expect little help from the stream of suggestions mailed to Washington by private individuals and organizations. The Red-tinted International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union suggested that members of Congress accept surplus food in lieu of pay raises, and a Nebraska woman thought that the free food should be given to pregnant women. The Agriculture Department solemnly rejected this last idea on the grounds that "it would be administratively impossible to establish adequate' tests of eligibility."

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