Earl Butz and Subsidies

A freelance journalist reviews "King Corn", a documentary of two Yalies growing an acre of corn and following it through the trade channels. The level of accuracy may be judged by this:

When they visit nonagenarian Earl Butz, the secretary of agriculture under Nixon who institutionalized subsidies for big agribusiness, they are positively gentle. From an assisted-care facility, Butz describes the subsidy system he helped set up for corporate agriculture as creating an “age of plenty.”

Butz is remembered, not so fondly by those of us old enough, as a Secretary who tried to dismantle the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (FSA's predecessor) and the farm programs of the time. As Kevin Drum observes in a post I've shared, "we create our own reality".