Onions Without Tears

White-haired, keen-eyed Sam Kennedy, Iowa's biggest onion and potato grower, last week finished a distasteful task. Across a 40-acre field on his farm near Clear Lake, Farmer Kennedy dumped 30 carloads of red and yellow globe onions. He put them there to rot. Like many another grower, Kennedy had been caught when onion prices, unsupported by Government props, collapsed a fortnight ago.

But Kennedy, who could have sold the onions for $90,000 six months ago, did not weep over his loss; nor did he yell for price support. He is opposed to price supports of any kind. With a self-reliance that would shock many a Farm Bloc Congressman, Republican Kennedy asked last week: "Why should any one group pay another group support prices or anything else? It always makes me tired to hear of the Government doing this or that. The Government don't have any money unless it takes it away from you or me first."

Kennedy had made a mistake in onions. Six months ago, when onions were bringing $5 per 50-lb. bag wholesale in Chicago, he thought prices would go higher and held on to his crop. When prices began to tumble instead, Kennedy sold two-thirds of his onions, making just about enough to break even on the whole crop. A fortnight ago, when prices sank to under 50-c- a bag (TIME, April 3), less than it would cost him to ship them to market, Kennedy had no choice but to destroy the remainder of his crop. Said he: "You might just as well take it when you get in a jam like this."

Sam Kennedy, who also raised 6,500,000 pounds of potatoes last year, admitted that he had made money from the potato support program. But he did not like that program either. "A lot of these crops," said he, "aren't grown for the market at all, but just for the support price. I believe in a free economy, and political control is not a free economy at all. The present setup is a vote-catching proposition and nothing else. Support prices at 90% of parity are sure politics."

Farmer Kennedy has gone along with Iowa's other potato farmers, who had voted to reduce their acreage and join 1950's support program. But this week he and his neighbors will meet again and he hoped they would reverse themselves and vote to stay out of the program. In any case he does not intend to reduce his acreage of unsupported onions, in spite of his loss.

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