Our editorial offices in the TIME &; LIFE Building in the heart of Manhattan, just across the Avenue of the Americas from Radio City Mu sic Hall, may seem to be a long way from the farm. Yet there was more than a touch of nostalgia among the reporting-writing-editing team that worked on this week's cover story about American Farm Bureau President Charles Shuman.

Senior Editor Michael Demarest looked up from the edited pages and, with a somewhat far-away look in his eye, recalled how as a boy he had helped feed the hogs on his father's farm in England, how he had milked cows during his wartime vacations from school ("I've never been able to stand milk since") and how, when he was a reporter on the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, he had helped out in his spare time in the vineyards and chicken houses on his mother's 50-acre ranch in the Napa Valley region of California. Now, on his suburban acreage in Westchester County, he is trying his not-necessarily-so-green thumb on apples (nine on the bough this year) and raspberries (a nice spoonful so far).

Writer Ed Shook was a city boy in the farm country, worked from time to time on a farm in southern Missouri, did his share of agricultural reporting as a staffer on the Kansas City Star. Reporter Art White was a town boy in city territory (Orange, N.J.) who has what might be called a consuming interest in agriculture. After one magnificent dinner at the Shuman farm, both White and his subject had to suspend the interview for an afternoon nap. Researcher Pat Gordon, who comes from Houston and remembers pleasant vacations on her grandfather's ranch in western Texas, is now trying her luck with avocado plants in her apartment in Manhattan.

Closest of all to this week's cover subject is Painter Peter Hurd, who lives and works on his 2,200-acre ranch. The Sentinel, near San Patricio in southern New Mexico. There he raises Brangus cattle and Thoroughbred horses, and has an apple orchard that produces in commercial quantity. The ranch is really an avocation ("Luckily, it's not my livelihood"), and Peter at times starts out to ride the range with his foreman and fails to get where he is heading because he stops to sketch scenes that particularly catch his eye. During the sittings for the cover painting (the background shows Shuman's farm in Illinois), artist and subject found a lot of farm topics to talk about and quite a bit to agree on. One point of agreement is suggested by the fact that Rancher Hurd has never received a Government subsidy check.

While the personal experiences of the people working on the cover project gave them a special frame of reference, the serious matter of producing the story, of course, called for an intensive study of the facts, issues and arguments surrounding the bountiful production and myriad troubles of U.S. agriculture. It is a story full of meaning for both city and country.

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