14. The role of the federal government in American food production
Until the Great Depression, the USDA acted primarily as an advisory body regarding most Americans, generating recommendations regarding diet and nutrition for Americans. Following the First World War, American farmers enjoyed a booming market for the first few years, supplying food to Europe as the war-ravaged farms of the continent attempted to recover. At the end of 1923 European markets for American food dried up. American farmers held surplus crops and animals, and prices received for their products declined rapidly in the years leading to the Great Depression. Already badly hit financially, many farmers were unable to plant crops, or sell those they had harvested, during the first three years of the depression.
The New Deal ushered in by the Roosevelt Administration changed the role of the USDA and forever altered the American food production chain. Following the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933, for the first time, the federal government manipulated the food supply by paying farmers for not growing certain crops and subsidizing the production of others. Five years later Congress passed a more comprehensive Agriculture Act, and every five or so years since an omnibus bill for farms, generally referred to as the Farm Bill, has been enacted. The bill aids farmers, large food production conglomerates, and others in the food production chain by manipulating the cost of America’s food supply.