Word: benedicts
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...final uncertainty facing agriculture is Government farm policy. Pat Benedict complains that it consists of "frustrating contradictions," and he has a point. For 40 years, starting with the New Deal, policy aimed at having farmers restrict production and sell at high Government-supported prices. In 1973-74, Earl Butz tried a new tack: he lobbied through Congress the law under which farmers could no longer unload their crops on the Government, urged them to increase output by planting "fence to fence," and set target prices far below market quotes. He got away with it because rocketing export demand permitted farmers...
...future of American agriculture is really up to the farmers. Paradoxically, in an enterprise perhaps more heavily influenced by the Government than any other, big and efficient farmers like Pat Benedict are giving the nation a lesson in Adam Smith economics. By carefully calculating their potential profit in a free market, planning their operations around those computations and reinvesting the profits in more output, they are acting the way Smith said capitalists should. The results have been about what Smith predicted: growing production, rising innovation, expanding exports?and reasonable costs to customers...
...hope of the have-not world. Farm-product exports tripled in the past six years to almost $27 billion, helping mightily to offset the cost of imports. The U.S. exports more wheat, corn and other coarse grains (barley, oats, sorghum) than all the rest of the world combined. Pat Benedict and farmers like him are America's best hope to counter the trade challenge presented by the oilmen of Araby and the energetic manufacturers of Japan. U.S. food exports would be higher still were it not for a variety of barriers: outrageous quotas that keep Japanese consumers from buying...
...Though these very large operations still constitute only 6% of all farms, they take in 53% of all farm cash receipts, almost double then-share as recently as 1967. These big farms are on the cutting edge of the marketing and technological revolution, as exemplified by the operations of Benedict Farms Inc. and its president and sole stockholder, Patrick E. Benedict...
...foot two and ruggedly handsome, Benedict is an odd mixture of shyness and aggressiveness. He speaks slowly and softly, choosing each word with care, and has to' be coaxed into talking about himself. But in discussing his business, he displays the combative urge that made him a championship wrestler in high school and during his two-year Navy hitch. Says Pat: "It's a sport I identify with. You're out there on your own, and if you can't cut it, it's pretty obvious." He feels much the same about farming, castigating many of his fellows for being...