From Foxholes to Farms

Abstract

The GI Bill established a broad and groundbreaking social safety net of educational and economic benefits and incentives for veterans returning from World War II. This chapter uncovers the history of two little-studied farm provisions of the GI Bill—farm loans and on-the-farm training—and shows that they helped set changes in motion that contributed to the demise of small farming by providing capital and technical assistance for progressive veterans to establish larger, more efficient farms. Interest in the farm provisions of the bill highlighted an abiding desire among landless farmers to own and operate farms, an ambition that had survived the war. Yet, the experience of veterans ultimately reveals that the agricultural components of the GI Bill contributed more to the capitalist transformation of southern agriculture than to fulfilling landless veterans’ hopes for acquiring family farms.