1929 - Agriculture

Agriculture

The Agricultural Marketing Act passed by Congress June 15 encourages farmers' cooperatives and provides for an advisory Federal Farm Board with $500 million in revolving funds to buy up surpluses in order to maintain prices. The funds are inadequate, and since farmers cannot be persuaded to produce less, farm prices continue to drop.

Half of all U.S. farm families produce less than $1,000 worth of food, fiber, or tobacco per year; 750,000 farm families produce less than $400 worth.

Signs of drought begin to appear in the U.S. Southwest and upper Great Plains (see 1930).

Foot-and-mouth disease strikes U.S. cattle and sheep herds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts widescale slaughter of animals and imposes such strict controls that there will no further U.S. outbreaks of the disease in this century.

Cattleman Gharles Goodnight dies at his winter home in Phoenix December 12 at age 93.

Soviet biologist Nikolai Vavilov endorses the government's push toward collectivized farms as a shortcut to scientific agriculture (see 1928; 1930).