11. Paying Farmers not to farm in 1933
Roosevelt’s first Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, and the President were in complete agreement when it came to taking care of farmers. Both believed that an increase in the prices of farm products, while detrimental to the urban poor, would be beneficial to the rural communities across the nation. Both also believed in the need to electrify those areas of the country, in particular the rural south, which had not yet been modernized. Farmers were suffering from Depression conditions long before the rest of the country, in part because of their own efficiency in crop and livestock production, which kept prices for their products low since supply exceeded demand. During FDR’s first one hundred days he pushed through the first of many acts to benefit farmers, the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933.
Reasoning that the best way to aid farmers struggling to profit from their profession was to increase the prices they received for their crops, Roosevelt and Wallace derived a means to decrease production by farmers by compensating them for not growing certain crops, or producing less products such as milk. The bill also contained the first nutritional supplementation program in the United States, which evolved eventually into what became known as food stamps. In addition to compensating farmers for reducing production, the federal government instituted programs to purchase excess grain, storing it for gradual release as economic conditions dictated. Ever since, the United States farm bill has been a subject of controversy and debate in the American body politic.