The Recreation Crop

Farmers grow too much on too much land. City wage earners have money, free weekends, but nowhere to go. Trying to alleviate these dual problems, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has instituted a program offering family farmers longterm loans up to $60,000 to develop "camping grounds, swimming facilities, tennis courts, riding stables, vacation cottages and lodges, lakes and ponds for boating and fishing, docks, nature trails, picnic grounds and hunting preserves."

In the four months since the program's inception. 306 farmers have applied for loans. A typical case: a small New Jersey dairy farmer, who wants to develop a seven-acre lake on his land to provide camp sites and boating facilities for vacationers and fishermen. The project would yield the applicant an estimated $3,000 in net income--about as much as he now earns from farming.

Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman hopes that the plan will remove a lot of farm land from production, thereby reducing the price-support burden while providing recreational facilities "on these rural lands near the crowded millions in our cities, convenient and easily accessible."

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