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Butz, Disgraced Farm Policy Architect, Dies At 98

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By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN, The New York Times

Published: February 4, 2008

Earl L. Butz, who orchestrated a major change in federal farm policy as secretary of agriculture in the 1970s but came to be remembered more for a vulgar racial comment that brought about his resignation during the 1976 presidential election race, died Saturday in Kensington, Md. Butz, who lived in West Lafayette, Ind., was 98.

Butz's son Bill, whom he had been visiting, said his father died in his sleep.

Serving under President Nixon and his successor, Gerald R. Ford, Butz was a forceful, sharp-tongued figure who promoted legislation sharply reducing federal subsidies for farmers.

He was the best-known secretary of agriculture since Henry A. Wallace in the Depression days, when the federal government began to pay farmers to keep some of their land and livestock out of production in the face of plunging income.
Butz maintained that a free-market policy, encouraging farmers to produce more and to sell their surplus overseas, could bring them higher prices. Farm income did rise during his time in office, in good measure the result of a huge grain shipment to the Soviet Union in 1972, but American consumers paid more for food.
Butz was an important source of political support in the Midwestern Farm Belt for the Nixon and Ford administrations. But he was criticized by Democrats in Congress who viewed him as the voice of "agribusiness," the corporate agricultural interests, at the expense of small farmers and consumers.

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