Farmers and "the Wheat Problem"

[Espee]

I saw a photo of a billboard, showing a little girl with a pageboy, and it reads:

Your Child's Bread and Butter Can Solve The Wheat Problem

One Slice More Each Meal Will Do It

[a section obscured].... HELP for the FARMERS

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When might the photo have been taken?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Probably 1930-32, after the collapse of wheat prices. By the time the collapse bottomed out, wheat was going for less than 50 cents a bushel (it had been around $2 for much of the twenties), and farmers were finding it cheaper to burn it in their stoves than to take it to market.

 

[Treetopflyer]

Back when we had family farms. This was, oddly enough, a topic of discussion tonight at dinner about how factory farms have taken over for the family farm and how the product of the farm has changed because of it.

 

[filfoster]

Thank goodness this was before gluten allergies were diagnosed!

 

[dhermann1]

I believe the problem started right after WW I. Farmers were selling their products for huge amounts due to war demand, but when the war ended prices just kept sliding. There was a farm depression from the mid 20's, that predated and then merged into the greater depression in the 30's.
My old pal Harry Truman (I just finished reading his bio) was a victim of this. He opened up his famous haberdashery (or as he called it his "shirt store") around 1921 in his home town of Independence, Missouri. He prospered for a year or so, but then the drop in farm prices caught up with him. The store went out of business after another year.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of commodity speculators got wiped out in that early '20s crash, along with farmers who never had any participation in "roaring Twenties"-style prosperity. The depression was just a continuation of misery for a lot of them, which explains why so many were willing to consider armed revolution by 1933. The image we have today of the Grant Wood-style Noble Rustic Man of The Soil should instead show him aiming his pitchfork at the throat of a judge who's just foreclosed on his farm.

 

[John in Covina]

Reminds me of the stories of oranges being dumped in the rivers and armed guards were employed to keep hungry people from getting them during the great depression

 

[Stanley Doble]

Milk was dumped in the rivers and on the ground, oranges were piled up and doused with kerosene so no one could eat them all on the orders of Roosevelt.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The idea was to drive commodity prices back up to give the farmers reason to keep on growing. The AAA was one of the bitterest pills of the Depression, but it did what it was intended to do.

 

[Renault]

Cattle were shot here. My grandfather said it was the most sickening thing he was ever caused to witness....

Renault

 

[LizzieMaine]

Much of the slaughtered meat was diverted to feed the unemployed, by order of the President. This involvement of the Government in the handling of surplus commodities became the nucleus of the Federal School Lunch program.

 

[Renault]

Dunno about that as I wasn't there. His description was they herded the animals into prepared ditches and shot them. Then they were burned and buried. I will mention there was a large "black leg" epidemic here in those days. But he stated all they saw were healthy animals. When I asked why, he simply said "to drive up the price of beef" and left it at that. I'm sure there were exceptions to everything. Especially in areas where transportation, etc., could be a bit problematic.

 

[BigFitz]

Some of the problem that led to the Dust Bowl. Prices were dropping so farmers tried planting more to make up the difference. "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan is a good read about the Dust Bowl.

 

[MisterCairo]

The idea was to drive commodity prices back up to give the farmers reason to keep on growing. The AAA was one of the bitterest pills of the Depression, but it did what it was intended to do.

Let people starve?

 

[LizzieMaine]

As pointed out above, much of the surplus commodities were taken over by the government and redistributed to the unemployed. The real failure in this situation was not in Government action, but in an unregulated system of commodity speculation which had the net effect of forcing farmers to sell their crops at less than the cost of production. The AAA was intended to -- and did, for the most part -- correct this imbalance. The alternative was a violent revolution against the system on the part of the farmers -- a revolution which was already beginning to smoulder by the time the AAA was implemented. In the Midwest, the Farmers Holiday Association committed numerous acts of terrorism in 1932-33, ranging from blowing up railroad tracks and derailing trains and blockading highways, to the attempted lynching of a judge. These men weren't fooling around, and had the AAA not been implemented much of farm country might very well have gone up in smoke. A lot more people would have starved had that happened.

"Let's hold a Farmer's Holiday!
A Holiday we'll hold!
We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs
And let them eat their gold!"
-- Anthem of the Farmers' Holiday Association

 

[Story]

In the Midwest, the Farmers Holiday Association committed numerous acts of terrorism in 1932-33, ranging from blowing up railroad tracks and derailing trains and blockading highways, to the attempted lynching of a judge.

That's a new one on me, thanks.