Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
Protected farmers from price drops by providing crop subside to reduce production, educational programs to teach methods of preventing soil erosion. It’s sometimes called the “Triple A”. World War 1 severely disrupted agriculture in Europe. That was an advantage to farmers in the United States, who increased production dramatically and were therefore able to export surplus food to European countries. The decline in demand for agriculture products meant that many many farmers had difficulty paying the mortgages on their farms.
In 1933 Roosevelt was president. He called congress into a special session and introduced a record 15 major pieces of legislation. One of the first to be introduced and enacted was the AAA, the Agricultural Adjustment Act. For the first time, Congress declared that it was “the policy of Congress” to balance supply and demand for farm commodities so that prices would support a decent purchasing power for farmers. This concept, outlined in the AAA, was known as “parity”.
AAA controlled the supply of seven “basic crops” corn, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, tobacco, and milk. By offering payments to farmers in return for taking some of their land out of farming. The AAA paid farmers to destroy some of their crops and farm animals. In 1933 alone, $100 million was paid out to cotton farmers to plow their crop back in the ground! Six million piglets were slaughtered by the government after it had bought them from the farmers.
The meat from the piglets was canned and given away for free to the unemployed. Though this is all made perfect sense in terms of economically stabilizing the farming market. Many Americans could not accept this policy of destruction. Opponents of the New Deal created a simple chant for people to express their views on the AAA – “Poor Little Piggy’s”. Regardless of this, the Act did make a marked improvement in the life of farmers as prices rose, evictions juristically dropped and the farmers’ income increased.
In 1934, the farmers who had benefitted from the AAA hit another major problem – dust storms. These storms destroyed farms especially in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Throughout the 1930’s over 350,000 farmers left for the west. They moved mostly to California where the weather created friendlier farming environment. The AAA could not cope with this. The Tennessee Valley had frequently flooded ruining farming land and destroying the hopes of the farmers who tried to work the land there.
Comments
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1639.html