New Deal Agricultural Policy: An Evaluation

Abstract

PERHAPS in no period of American history were the efforts of the federal government to resolve the almost unresolvable problems of the farm prosecuted with greater vigor and optimism than during the New Deal years. What administrators and politicians thought and did about the depressed state of the farmers more or less set the pace for policy making in the post-World War II decades and deserves serious study. Any attempt to assess or reassess the agricultural policy of the New Deal requires a definition of what one means by that policy and a statement of what historians have had to say about it. New Deal farm policy included a series of complex and interrelated programs that aimed to elevate the long-range social and economic position of the farmers, rather than simply attain stated price objectives. The policy was as comprehensive in character as political considerations permitted, seemingly contradictory and inconsistent, and the product of many minds and influences at work outside and inside the Department of Agriculture before and after the Roosevelt administration took office. The Department of Agriculture was among the most prestigious of all federal government agencies of cabinet rank and played a crucial and dominant role in all this. But other agencies participated too; and since their actions had a definite bearing on the farmer, they and their programs must be considered a part of farm policy. Agencies which liberal groups easily could believe were more constructive and creative in their approach than the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) included: the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which during the course of its existence provided many rural communities with relief; the Resettlement Administration (RA), which became an official part of the Department of Agriculture only after