Pros And Cons Of The Agricultural Adjustment Act

The Agricultural Adjustment Act was part of the New Deal that was established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in May 1933. It was a farm relief bill that was a plan to help farmers by paying them to cut their production because they were overproducing and countries were not buying their products. In the years of 1932-1937, farmer’s cash income was doubled. WWII helped get farmers back on track and producing more products. The bill had to be rewritten in 1938 because Congress declared it unconstitutional in Jan. 1936. The AAA of 1938 was a response to the rejection of the 1933 AAA. It revived the provisions in the previous Act, with the exception that the finances were to be provided by the Federal Government instead of the processor’s tax. Though the Act made sense in terms of economically stabilizing the market many Americans couldn’t accept this policy. Opponents of the New Deal created a chant for the people to express their own views about the AAA, it was known as “Poor Little Piggies”. In 1934, the farmers that had benefited from the AAA, hit a major problem – Dust Storms. The storms destroyed farms in Oklahoma and Arkansas and throughout the 1930’s over 350,000 farmers left the west especially California where the weather created a more friendly

It was the reaction to financially adverse conditions in the time of the Great Depression. Roosevelt set out to rebuild confidence in the banking system. First he put a Four-Day Banking Holiday that shutdown all banks in the United States as well as the Federal Reserve. It was intended to restore Americans’ confidence in the banks. Depositors lined up to put their stashed cash into their neighborhood banks. Americans redeposited more than half their currency within two weeks from the reopen of the banks. The Banking Holiday and the EMA of 1933 ended the bank runs that had plagued the Great