Clifford Hardin, Who Cut Subsidies at Agriculture Dept., Dies at 94

Clifford M. Hardin, who as the first secretary of agriculture in the Nixon administration succeeded in limiting subsidy payments to the nation’s largest farmers, died Sunday at his home in Lincoln, Neb. He was 94. The University of Nebraska, where Mr. Hardin was chancellor from 1954 to 1968, announced the death. In 1970, in delicate, secret negotiations with lawmakers, the soft-spoken Mr. Hardin put together a deal that would limit federal subsidies to any one farm to $55,000 on each of three basic crops: cotton, wheat and feed grains. Critics had long questioned what they considered a disproportion of federal supports going to the biggest farms. The 1970 farm bill also included a “set-aside” plan that Mr. Hardin had proposed. It called for farmers to agree to leave a certain percentage of their land idle to qualify for federal payments and price supports...more