Earl Butz Character Analysis

The Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon, Earl Butz abolished the New Deal system that had kept corn’s quantity and price relatively stable through loans and buyback deals with farmers. Butz engineered a huge spike in the price of corn to justify making policies that favored large farms and high yields instead of small farms. Instead of keeping the price stable, the system changed so that the price could fluctuate, and the government would pay farmers directly. This allowed the price to fall as yield increased, which has trapped farmers like Naylor in the cycle of constantly falling prices and growing yields.