Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth CenturyGreat scientific and technological advances in the twentieth century enabled American farmers to produce bountiful harvests that ensured an abundant and relatively cheap food supply. But as farmers became more productive, surplus agricultural commodities, such as grain, milk, and cotton, drove prices down. With few exceptions, farmers found it difficult to earn an adequate standard of living. These are the fundamental developments that Douglas Hurt traces in Problems of Plenty, a compact narrative history of American agriculture over the last century. Mr. Hurt shows how farm men and women increasingly looked to the federal government--for technical information to help them become more productive and more profitable; for regulation of business practices to guarantee them equitable treatment in the marketplace; for intervention in the agricultural economy to support prices and protect their income. The course of farm policy is a basic theme in Mr. Hurt's book. He surveys the major policy changes that helped shape farming both as a business and as a way of life. Perhaps inevitably, as he points out, farmers came to depend on the federal government for a wide variety of programs they eventually regarded as entitlements. But in return the farmers lost freedom of action, because the cost of participating in federal programs was compliance with a myriad of regulations that made the government an integral part of American agriculture. As the twentieth century ended, farmers remained divided over government's role in their lives, just as they had been for most of the century. |
Contents
The Age of Uncertainty | 41 |
The New Deal | 67 |
Prosperity and Decline | 97 |
Copyright | |
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Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century R. Douglas Hurt No preview available - 2002 |
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acreage acres Administration agri agribusiness agricul Agricultural Adjustment Agricultural Adjustment Act agricultural economy agricultural policy agricultural prices American agriculture American farmer average banks believed bracero program Brannan bushel cents Commodity Credit Corporation commodity prices Congress consumers cooperatives corn costs cotton creased crops cultural dairy declined demand duction economic embargo Farm Bloc Farm Bureau farm income farm organizations farm policy farm prices farm problem farm programs federal government growers guaranteed hogs improve labor land land-grant colleges landowners large-scale legislation livestock loans market prices ment Midwest million needed nonfarm northern Great Plains operating parity prices payments percent of parity planting political President price supports profit Progressive Era purchase received reform regulation regulatory remained Republican Roosevelt rural seed sharecroppers sharecroppers and tenants small-scale farmers South Southern soybeans subsidies surplus surplus production tariff tion tractors tural twentieth century urban USDA wheat women World War II