The Machines that Broke America: Conflicts of Interests in Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (original) (raw)
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Great Plains Quarterly, 2015
Numerous scholars have surveyed the creation of a vulnerable agricultural landscape on the Great Plains during the years surrounding World War I, and especially the alterations to the landscape of crop production that precipitated the 1930s Dust Bowl. What they have missed, however, is the impact of the first government-sponsored enterprise, the federal land banks, and the role of government-seeded credit in radically shifting the farm mortgage market and production patterns in this region after 1917. This article adds the critical element of economic causality to the story of the Great Plains Plow-Up, arguing that federal credit policy, in the form of the 1916 Federal Farm Loan Act, created the financial mechanism for the pattern of surplus production that has challenged farmers and agricultural policymakers since the end of World War I. With this law the U.S. government launched into the mortgage market, and provided the essential start-up capital for farmers in historically undercapitalized regions, thus reshaping the form and scale of American agriculture. Using the financing provided under the Federal Farm Loan Act, Great Plains farmers were able to consolidate and mechanize their farms, and thus respond to the call to “plant more wheat” during the war years, thereby creating the unprecedented grain surpluses that paved the way for decades of overproduction. The high yields and increased cultivation of the postwar years forced farmers to further maximize production, even as surpluses drove prices down. The economic imbalance of production cycles during the 1920s led to repeated calls for government intervention in commodity markets, and eventually to the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, which implemented the production control policies that have dominated U.S. agricultural policy ever since. The federal land banks contributed substantially to the mechanization and consolidation of American agriculture, and to the problem of surplus that has defined farm policy since the 1920s. “From Breadbasket to Dust Bowl” contextualizes the agricultural reforms of the 1910s, and demonstrates the expansive impact of this new form of federal aid to agriculture on the rural economy and American public policy into the 21st century.
U.S. Land Policy, Property Rights, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2001
In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees." John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939, 6) I. Introduction. The process of assigning property rights to land in the American Great Plains resulted in farms that were too small to be economically viable. Under the Homestead Act, hundreds of thousands of 160 to 320-acre farms were founded between 1880 and 1920. These farms were more likely to fail during drought, and because of the cultivation practices used on them, we hypothesize that small farms were principal contributors to the region's most significant environmental crisis, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Drought conditions returned to the Great Plains in the late 1950s and 1970s, yet there was no return to the Dust Bowl. New farming techniques and larger farms likely were major reasons. 1 The path dependence resulting from the initial assignment of property rights on the Great Plains was slow to be corrected. The transactions costs of property rights reallocation from homesteads to larger farms were high, in part due to government intervention. Local politicians sought to retain the dense, Midwest-like population that homestead settlement had fostered, and they successfully lobbied the Federal Government for subsidies to maintain small family farms. An abrupt loss of rural population was not politically acceptable. The result was a halting process of farm size adjustment between 1920 and 1982. This case illustrates the difficult environmental problems that can be raised by an inappropriate assignment of property rights. It cannot be assumed that a more efficient allocation of rights with fewer negative environmental effects will occur quickly. As Ronald Coase noted, high transactions costs can impede the
Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930's
2003
We provide a new and more complete analysis of the origins of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, one of the most severe environmental crises in North America in the 20 th Century. Severe drought and wind erosion hit the Great Plains in 1930 and lasted through 1940. There were similar droughts in the 1950s and 1970s, but no comparable level of wind erosion. We explain why. The prevalence of small farms in the 1930s limited private solutions for controlling the downwind externalities associated with wind erosion. Drifting sand from unprotected fields damaged neighboring farms. Small farmers cultivated more of their land and were less likely to invest in erosion control than were larger farmers. Soil Conservation Districts, established by government after 1937, helped coordinate erosion control. This "unitized" solution for collective action is similar to that used in other natural resource/environmental settings.
In allocating private property rights to land, U.S. policy in the 19 th century emphasized the formation of small farms in the East and Midwest. In doing so, it created the conditions for path-dependency in the 20 th century in the Great Plains. Under the 1862 Homestead Act, hundreds of thousands of 160 to 320-acre farms were established between 1880 and 1920. These subsequently were found to be too small to be viable over the long term. A lack of understanding of the region's semi-arid climate, unusual rainfall during the settlement period, and political pressure to maximize the farm population molded the land distribution policy. Early efforts to revise the land laws to allow for larger allocations in the Great Plains were resisted. Both politicians and homesteaders sought dense settlement, but it could not be sustained. When localized droughts occurred, farm failures or "homestead busts" followed. Widespread outmigration followed. Nothing like this had taken place on previous agricultural frontiers. Drought and farm collapse were particularly severe during the 1930s. Moreover, cultivation practices by small farmers intensified wind erosion known as the Dust Bowl. The plight of the region's farmers was chronicled in the photographs of Dorothea Lange (An American Exodus) and the writings of John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath). The region received the largest per capita relief payments and had the highest out-migration rates in the U.S. 82 percent of Great Plains counties peaked in population between 1910 and 1930 and the average decline in population from peak levels to 1990 was 71 percent. Gradual farm consolidation led to units more appropriate for a semi-arid region, but the adjustment process was a costly one.
A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture Since 1929
Contemporary Rural Social Work, 2011
Born in 1929 and raised on a small farm in eastern Tennessee, Paul Conkin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Vanderbilt University, provides an accessible work on the development of agriculture in the United States over the last 80 years. Conkin is neither an apologist for American agriculture nor a critic. Perhaps he might best be described as an interested bystander who has observed that “agriculture has been the most successful sector in the recent economic history of the United States” (p. x). Since 1950, the productivity of American farms has increased at least tenfold, an advance which never fails to astound Conkin. This balanced and partially biographical work is a good place to begin to understand how farming and rural life has changed in the latter half of the 20th century.
The Corporate Farming Debate In ThePost -World War II Midwest
1998
Ben Hogan balanced a mix of milk cows, corn, soybeans, sheep, and turkeys, avoided borrowing too much, invented his own machinery, and maintained an orderly farm, keeping his fences "horse high, bull strong and hog tight." Above all, he worked hard: "He worked and never slowed. He bulled his way through the house before sunrise each morning, growling to his sons to get out of bed and do the chores." He motivated the sons, who worked as hard as he did, by telling them "You're the laziest damned rednecks I ever laid eyes on. You're the weakest goddamned mollycoddles I ever Jon Lauck received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Iowa and is the author of numerous articles on the agicultural history of the American midwest. He is currently pursuing a doctor of laws at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Rethinking the American farm problem
Food Policy, 1986
ReportlConferences nomic Cooperation and Development into account, that meant a decline in show that the leading 17 western aid to agriculture of around 20%. donor countries are nowgiving less aid to Third World agriculture than in 1980.