Farmers Raising Cain

Some have made "bad business judgments." Others were "driven by just old-fashioned greed." So said Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland last week as 4,000 farmers from as far away as Colorado rolled into Washington aboard tractors and campers to press for higher farm price supports. If Bergland's bluntness was startling, so was the demonstrators' cause. Last winter when the small American Agriculture Movement organized its first drive-in at the capital, farm prices were depressed and many U.S. farmers were genuinely strapped. But now the A.A.M. militants, who signaled their arrival by dis rupting traflic and scuffling with police, are crying poor at a time when most farm ers are doing quite well.

The A.A.M. wants crop prices raised to 90% of "parity," an antiquated concept founded on the argument that farm prices should have been rising as fast as nonfarm prices since World War I. Agriculture Department economists scoff at this demand; they say that 90% parity would drive retail food prices --the biggest single factor in the U.S.'s inflation problem --up by 16% this year, on top of the 10% increase of 1978.

Because strong demand has pushed up prices for wheat, beef and other products, farmers have managed to stay well ahead of inflation. By the Agriculture Department's reckoning, total farm income rose an impressive 40% last year, to about $28 billion, not far below the 1973 record of $33 bil lion. A Government-financed on-farm grain storage pro gram launched in the fall of 1977 is helping to maintain this prosperity.

So who is hurting? Evidently it is a minority of farmers who unwisely took on onerous debts in the mid-1970s to buy costly new acreage in the be lief that prices for farm land would continue to soar. The typical farmer, who has a modest 170 in debt for every dollar in assets, has no need to raise Cain in Washington.

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