1930 - Agriculture

Agriculture

Twenty-five percent of Americans live on or from the farm, many of them on subsistence farms that operate outside the money economy. The total number of U.S. farms is roughly 6.3 million (see 1931).

The U.S. wheat crop comes in at 857 million bushels, despite crop failures due to drought in some areas; the world harvest is 3.8 billion bushels, not counting the Soviet Union, whose crop is sold in great quantities on world markets. Western Australia's wheat crop sets a record that will not be topped for 30 years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture establishes a Grain Stabilization Corp. to buy up surpluses that are depressing farm prices, but the $500 million appropriated to fund its activities is not nearly sufficient (see Commodity Credit Corp., 1933). Prices of agricultural commodities, especially wheat, are weak all summer and fall as farmers continue to increase their planted acreage. The Grain Stabilization Corp. does not begin buying on the Chicago Board of Trade until November 15.

Major U.S. crops produce barely $8 per acre and the average annual farm income is $400 per family. Tenant farmers work four out of 10 U.S. farms as compared with nine out of 10 British farms, one-third of farms in western Europe, 78 percent of Australian farms, and 40 percent of Argentine farms.

Fifty-five percent of agricultural workers on Soviet farms are employed on collective farms (see Stalin's Five-Year Plan, 1928).

The mortgage debt of U.S. farms is $9.2 billion, up from $3.2 billion in 1910. Farmers have borrowed heavily to buy the machines they need to remain competitive.

California authorities arrest more than 100 farm workers in the Imperial Valley April 14 for trying to unionize (eight will be convicted on charges of "criminal syndicalism").

Twenty percent of the North American workforce is employed in agriculture as compared with 7 percent in Britain, 25 percent in France, 40 percent in Japan.

Farmers in the Corn Belt begin to drop their resistance to hybrid corn as test plantings demonstrate how dramatically the new corn can increase yields (see 1921; Bantam, 1933).

Colorado-Utah rancher James Monaghan, 38, opens northwest Colorado cattle ranges to sheep grazing. He started working as a cowhand in summer roundups at age 16 and now heads the Rio Branco Wool Growers' Association.

Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Peninsula poultry farmers begin raising the broiler chicken, developed by the Department of Agriculture at Beltsville, Md., and USDA stations in other southern locations. Epidemics of coccidiosis, Marek's disease, Newcastle disease, and other poultry ills will restrict the size of flocks until after the mid-1950s, keeping poultry a seasonal food and limiting consumption of chicken, which will remain costlier than red meat for the next 30 years, but the battery-raised chicken will eventually replace the spring chicken (see Merck coccidiostats, 1956).