1933 - Agriculture

Agriculture

U.S. farm prices drop 63 percent below 1929 levels as compared with 15 percent for industrial prices since industrialists can control production more effectively than can farmers (see 1932). Cotton sells in February at 5.5¢/lb., down from a 1909-1914 average of 12.5¢, and wheat sells for 32.3¢/bushel, down from an average of 88.4¢.

The Tennessee Valley Authority will improve agriculture in the Tennessee Valley region, making Alabama's backwoods Sands Mountain region the nation's most profitable small-farming area, with the emphasis on raising corn and feeding it to chickens for production of poultry and eggs.

The Jones-Costigan Act (Sugar Act of 1934) signed into law by President Roosevelt May 9 protects beet growers without raising tariffs by requiring that at least half of all U.S. sugar needs be supplied by domestic producers and grants subsidies to those producers. The Sugar Act allows prices far above world levels to help friendly nations that sell to the United States. Quotas are assigned to offshore producers, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, and the Department of State will use those quotas over the years to reward or punish foreign nations depending on how cooperative they are to U.S. interests (see Cuba, 1960).

An Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) voted by Congress May 12 authorizes establishment of an Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) within the Department of Agriculture (see 1938).

A Farm Credit Act passed by Congress June 16 consolidates rural credit agencies under a Farm Credit Administration.

An Emergency Farm Bill becomes law in June, and the AAA sets out to restore farm income by reviving 1909-1914 average prices for wheat, dairy products, cotton, tobacco, corn, rice, sugar, hogs, and peanuts. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, now 44, orders limitation procedures to compensate for the fact that the AAA was established after most crops were planted and pigs were farrowed. He has some 400,000 farrowed pigs destroyed and 330,000 acres of cotton plowed under. His action raises prices but outrages many farmers, who consider it virtually a sacrilege, and the resulting redundancy of labor on Southern plantations initiates a movement of black and poor white sharecroppers and tenant farmers to northern cities (see cotton picker, 1949).

Congress creates the Commodity Credit Corp. in the U.S. Department of Agriculture to buy surpluses, supervise loans, and handle any subsidies payable to farmers for reducing their crop acreage (see 1930; 1935).

Midwestern farmers strike in October to force up prices by withholding products from market. They complain that the AAA has no real power (see 1932).

The world wheat price falls to an historic low of £4 per cwt, where it will remain through 1934. An International Wheat Agreement approved at London in August establishes country-by-country export quotas for the 1933 and 1934 harvests and provides for a 15 percent worldwide reduction in wheat acreages for next year; representatives of Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States sign the agreement, but Argentina exceeds her quota by 1 million tons, enforcing the acreage limitations will prove impossible, and the IWA will soon collapse.

The Roca-Runciman Agreement signed by Britain and Argentina guarantees the latter a fixed share in the British market for meat and bars any tariff on imports of Argentine cereal grain imports. Argentina agrees in return to some stipulations with regard to trade, currency exchange, and British business interests in Argentina.

At least a million destitute U.S. farm families receive direct government relief. While farm prices begin to inch up, a farmer must pay the equivalent of nine bushels of wheat for a pair of work shoes, up from two bushels in 1909.

Roughly 25 percent of U.S. workers are engaged in agriculture, down from nearly 50 percent in 1853 (see 1950).

Golden Cross Bantam corn permits U.S. farmers to increase their yields, which still average only 22.8 bushels per acre of land (see East, Shull, 1921; Pioneer Hi-Bred, 1926). The first commercial hybrid grain to be planted on a large scale, Golden Cross Bantam meets with resistance from farmers accustomed to open-pollinated corn. Farmers balk at buying hybrid seed, especially for plants which require far more work (every other row must be detasseled, and that can mean 5,000 to 8,000 tassels per acre). Those who do plant hybrid seeds increase their yields dramatically.

Anaheim, Calif., grower Walter Knott, 43, rediscovers the boysenberry developed in 1920 and makes it the basis of Knott's Berry Farms. He harvests five tons of the long, reddish-black berries per acre but will later turn the place into a 190-acre amusement park.

Farm families on the southern plains are reduced for the most part to subsisting on cornbread and beans as they go through a third consecutive drought year.

Switzerland prepares for a possible war: a federal decree reduces the size of cattle herds to make the nation independent of foreign grain imports. Further decrees will forbid the sale of hard cheese, including Emmenthaler (the oldest, most important Swiss cheese, generally exported in giant wheels weighing from 150 to 220 pounds each) until it is at least 1 year old and, later, 2 years, in order to build a large emergency stock of cheese as a source of protein.