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Agriculture during great depression
Agriculture during great depression
The effects opf the great depression on farming
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Of all the Alphabet Agencies established under Roosevelt’s New Deal, the AAA, the WPA, and the FDIC had the most impact on helping America to recuperate from the terrible effects of the Great Depression. The Great Depression led to many American companies going out of business or cutting their workforce drastically to survive, which left many Americans unemployed. The AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) was put in place to deal with the masses of food product being produced in America after the war. After WW1, American farms expanded to produce lots more food to sell in Europe as many European farms had been destroyed. When European farming eventually recovered, they no longer needed to buy American produce, leaving American farmers with far
Snap! As I stepped on the last bit of a wilted cornstalk, I fretted the next harvest hoping it would be better. I barely could support my family, and I can not think about going through this again next year. The Dust Bowl practically killed all my crops, and the crops that were left had no profit. I can just hear my daughter asking again, “Daddy when can we eat something besides bread and corn.”
Life is not always about good days and but sometimes bad days are possible in life. After the great wars, the United States enjoyed 10 years of flourishing life after the great war. This period Known as the boom period or return of normalcy was a period of uninterrupted wealthy living and also overspending. This wealthy living and overproduction led to hardship in the 1930s. These Acts led to the worst economic failure in the history of in United State of America.
Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time.
The New Deal Acts of the 1930s were critical for farmers and agriculture as a whole. Unquestionably farmers struggled the most during the Great Depression along with the Dust Bowl, to make things worse. New Deal Acts such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act made it possible for agriculture to gradually recover overtime. When the drought began, farmers were losing their way of life by not being able to farm. Before long, they went bankrupt after spending money on new technologies after coming out of a golden age of weather.
Crop production dried up during this time due to lack of rain and the dust storms that would plow through their cities. Without any crops farmers struggled to try and keep their farms. The African Americans’ experienced the great depression before the stock market crashed, when it did crash, they were hit much harder
“Everyone knows the henchmen of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover told prairie ranchers it was safe to plow the prairie grass and turn their cattle ranch into a wheat farm. When the drought years arrived, they made the Red River Valley into the Dust Bowl.” “It’s always the Republicans. Isn’t it?” “They made an alliance with the Wall Street Banks,” John said and went on to explain that the banks planned to drive the family farmer into bankruptcy, reprocess their land and sell it to corporate farmers.
Eight Months in the Dust Bowl One group of ninth graders was put to the task of surviving one winter, 240 days, in the dust bowl with limited food and water. During this eight months the group of four, two males and two females, had only one cow, one bull, 500 bushels of wheat, and 500 gallons of drinkable water. This group decided that the best way to survive would be that every person would get 2.6 gallons of water to last them 5 days and after that five days pass each person would get an additional 2.6 gallons.
Both, urban and rural Americans suffered during the Great Depression, but not in the same way. Many urban Americans had to deal with living in large communities of homes made out of cardboard boxes due to homelessness and lack of food in the cites (Schultz, 2013). At the same time, rural Americans were losing their farms due to the crops as a result of the drought. The Great Depression was a perfect time for the Communist Party of the United States to thrive, as a large portion of Americans believed that Capitalism was the cause of the whole thing.
While the great depression and the Dust Bowl contributes to the downfall of the “Okies” the problems for the farmers started many years before that. During World War I food supplies were in demand due to the closed European markets, farmers were compelled to invest heavily to invest in land and machinery to meet the demand of the market. Once the war was done the prices of their crops dropped significantly which left the farmers unable to repay the hefty loans they took out from the banks. Therefore while the economy was booming before the great depression at the end of the 1920’s, farmers were experiencing very harsh times and had their assets and land seized by banks and private sectors. Like the Joads, they were evicted from their land and
Surviving the dust bowl, many people left since the living conditions were so harsh. Some people tried to stay but in the end they had to leave since they lost their land in bank foreclosures. By 1940 about 2.5 million people have moved to the flatland; of those 200,000 moved to California. Landing in California, the migrants were confronted with an existence practically as troublesome as the one they had cleared out. The dust bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history.
“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs.
The erosion of soil and drought was finally recognized as dangerous in the 1930s. Many struggling farmers in the eastern half of the country struggled to make a living due to crops failing because of the weather. Farmers lost their home or farm because they were unable to pay their mortgages. In an attempt to make more money, they would plant more crops, especially wheat. However, after the stock market crash of 1929, investors lost more than four billion dollars, and people lost their jobs and money; the nation was in an economic depression.
The result was a 65% increase in farm income during the period of four years . Roosevelt also introduced conservation policies and educated workers on new farming techniques, and by 1939, soil erosion was reduced by 21.7%. It is evident that the New Deal’s policies significantly improved agriculture in the USA, particularly in the Southwest where states had been greatly affected by the Dust Bowl. By teaching farmers to avoid previous farming techniques – such as the extensive deep plowing of topsoil – flood control was enabled and growing seasons were stabilised. In addition, people also had better access to clean water and cheap electricity in Arizona and California.
“The WPA taught 400,000 African American women and men to read and write” (Katz). This is a freedom from the effect of the Great Depression because now more African Americans can read and write, unlike when the Great Depression was happening. Again, this is a positive effect of the New Deal because now that these African American men and women can read and write, and they can now get a jobs. The Roosevelt Administration set up the Resettlement Administration to help poor farmers relocate to marginal lands by providing loans (“New Deal”). First, this is a positive effect of the New Deal because it helped poor farmers move to better land to grow better produce to make up for the lost from the Great Depression.
