The Homestead Act Hits Home

An old law threatens farmers in the West

The Homestead Act of 1862 sent young men rushing westward by the thousands to stake their claim to 160 acres of public land, free of charge. More than a century later, the range has become the home of agribusiness conglomerates and huge farms of thousands of acres; the lone homesteader who tilled his quarter section (onefourth of a square mile, which totals 640 acres) has gone the way of the American buffalo.

Now a court decision is forcing Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus to try to bring back the old homesteader. In August, Andrus announced that 1 million acres of federally irrigated farm land in 18 Western states would be redistributed in a national lottery on the homestead principle of 160 acres for a farmer and each member of his family. The Andrus proposal caused outrage throughout the West. Particularly shaken up were the owners of the enormous "factories of the fields" in areas like California's Imperial Valley, one of the largest food baskets in the U.S.

The lottery proposal grew out of a federal suit filed in 1975 by National Land for People Inc., a group of small California farmers who charged that the Government had never really enforced the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902. That law's original goal: to give a boost to the small family farmer by granting 160-acre parcels of the West's vast quantity of public arid land, and making it fit for agriculture by bringing in federally subsidized water. According to the suit, larger landowners (including such agribusiness giants as Southern Pacific Co., Standard Oil and Tenneco Inc.) gradually cut themselves in for Government water, ignoring the requirement that they sell any land in excess of 160 acres in exchange.

In April 1976, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled in favor of the small farmer, ordering the Government to enforce the 1902 act. Andrus proposes to do that by forcing large landowners to sell off all acreage exceeding the 160-acre limit to small farmers. Last week he announced that a series of ten public hearings on the new regulations would be held in seven Western states and Washington, D.C., beginning next month. "We expect plenty of testimony, plenty, about how the West was won," he said wryly.

Andrus may get even more than he expects. Two weeks ago, hundreds of California farmers ringed the San Diego convention center, where the state Republican Party was holding its annual meeting, waving placards that read FAIRNESS FOR FARMERS and SAVE THE IMPERIAL VALLEY. As more than 50 huge tractors churned around the building, farmers warned that the show was only a dress rehearsal for an even larger demonstration scheduled for Oct. 22 in Los Angeles --where President Carter will address a Democratic Party fund-raising dinner.

The Western farmers' main complaint: the 1902 act is archaic because modern mechanized farming techniques have made it impossible for anyone to earn a living on a 160-acre tract. Moreover, Imperial Valley landowners point out, of the 450,000 Imperial acres under the plow, only 20,000 belong to corporate farms; the rest of the land is farmed by families.

One of those farms belongs to Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Robert Meyer, whose family owns or leases 2,100 Imperial Valley acres. Like his neighbors, Meyer believed the valley was exempt from the 1902 law because local farmers had built their own 50-mile Alamo Canal to irrigate their fields in 1901, a year before the Government offered to help out. When a federal court disagreed last August--after an eleven-year legal battle --Meyer launched a personal lobbying campaign. Contending that he was acting as a private citizen, he urged members of Congress and White House aides to exempt the Imperial Valley from the big sell-off Last week President Carter ordered Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland to rein in his deputy fast.

Peanut Farmer Carter, however, is troubled by the proposed breakup of some 5,000 farms in the Western states. He owns 2,000 acres of Georgia soil (the land is not affected by the 1902 law, since it is not irrigated by federal projects). Said Carter: "Seventy-five years ago, 320 acres for a husband and wife for irrigated land was all they could handle. Now, with massive development and large machinery, a larger acreage is necessary for an economically viable farm operation. So the law needs to be changed. But," Carter added, for the present "we don't have any alternative but to enforce the law."

That, of course, leaves amiable Cecil Andrus in the unenviable position of the Government's main enforcer--caught between the letter of the law and the anger of Western farmers. As a former Governor of Idaho, where a middling potato farm can cover 580 acres, Andrus would ike to see the law changed. "We may ask Congress to amend the language of the 1902 act," Andrus told TIME last week, "but basically the true family farmer has nothing to worry about.''

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.