2. Farmers were among the hardest hit during the first three years of the depression
During the First World War, America’s farmers responded to the government’s urging and produced record crops. The following decade of the Roaring Twenties found prices for their crops declining steadily, due to the results of their success in creating surpluses. Throughout the 1920s, farmers encountered declining prices, as well as several years of failed crops due to weather. Competition from imports took their toll. By the end of the decade, farmers were struggling; the collapse of the stock market and the ensuing bank failures added to their miseries.
Beginning in the fall of 1930, after another bad year for crops across much of the American plains, farmers began to default on their loans. Banks were unable to carry them foreclosed in previously unforeseen numbers. Other farmers managed to hold on to their properties for a time, but lacked the wherewithal to plant crops. When drought conditions arrived, the unplanted fields added to the Dust Bowl conditions which devastated the Great Plains in waves during the 1930s. Some small farmers managed to survive the depression and the series of droughts which accompanied it through diversification of labor, and the sale of some property to pay taxes and loans. Thousands did not during the early years of the depression.