Problem of Poverty in Agriculture

Abstract

There are two predominant complexes of problems in American agriculture. One has to do with commercial, scientific agriculture. It relates to income, prices, and balance between commercial agriculture and industry in an exchange national economy. The second complex of problems is related to that part of the agricultural population which has not advanced very far in the national commercial economy. Poverty is not a good symbol for this wide group of people, because those in poverty can range from the poor who are practically destitute to those whose income, economic situation and pattern of living do not measure up to a certain arbitrary set of standards. If your interest is primarily in commercial farming you designate the first complex of problems as Number One in agriculture. If your interest is in the low-income group, you designate their troubles as the Number One problem, and the troubles of commercial farming as Number Two. But as we look into the future, and think in terms of the future of democracy, of the kind of rural life that our social philosophy sanctions and of the complexities and difficulties involved, low-income farming becomes our Number One agricultural problem. Rural poverty in the United States is not solely the outgrowth of the post-war depression. The lot of the pioneer farmer on the frontier was poor in comparison with present-day living standards. Before the great depression most of you, however, like I myself, thought of rural poverty either in terms of the county poor farm or of the shiftless people who lived across the tracks. Those of us in agricultural colleges and experiment stations who sought to work out systems of farming which would yield satisfactory farm incomes did not bother much about people whose circumstances were such that they could not get into the good income group. Thus, in most cases, agricultural institutions of research and education were practically unaware of the extent and nature of poverty in rural