Political Backlash in the Wheat Belt
HUTCHINSON, Kan.--The danger of political loss attending President Carter's retreat from campaign promises in the Wheat Belt is that the broken promises coincide with a Wheat Belt recession of portentous political dimension.</br></br>The President's year-old pledge to give wheat farmers a level of price supports "at least to equal production cost" might he passed over as standard campaign hyperbole if wheat prices were now firming and farmers contentedly purring.</br></br>Instead, a little-noticed survey by the Department of Agriculture shows that in mid-spring three of six major wheat statesÛÓKansas, Nebraska and OklahomaÛÓwere in "very severe" financial straits; the other threeÛÓColorado, North Dakota and South DakotaÛÓwere in a "severeÛ financial situation.</br></br>This largely overlooked report makes sinister reading: Of 32,001) hank borrow-<;iS surveyed in Kansas during April, where almost all loans are linked to the wheat economy, 8,200 "cannot repay" their loans ami 11,000, or 35 per cent, arc either compelled to refinance Ihcir iiuleliledness or "dispose of their assets."</br></br>Consequently, wheat farmers are not purring contentedly. On the contrary, added to the normal political grievance spreading across the lush soils of Kansas is the special fury of a voter scorned that comes from this fact: Thousands of wheal families and other rural voters reversed age-old Republican voting habits last November to support Jimmy Carter, apparently on the theory that a peanut farmer was a natural ally of a wheat farmer.