Effects Of The Great Depression On Farmers

The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression reveals the economical battle throughout the Great Depression, as well as the dust bowl. Real people struggled to subsist the times of poverty and extensive horticultural difficulties. Bonnifield states that agricultural hardship during the dust bowl expedited due to several dry years. Farmers started a new method of farming known as dry land farming which led to the major destruction of the Great Plains' prairie grass. 6Ranchers also played a big part in the dust bowl because of overgrazing. Eventually, the land was stripped down to dirt.7

To start off I should give a little background to help understand what the new deal was fighting, and I will stick more to the agricultural side of the depression in the interest of brevity. The main culprit that hurt the citizens of the U.S. was unemployment. This came about due to a couple of factors. But in my opinion the most important ones are credit, and deflation due to abundance. Both of these reasons abound in the agricultural sector of the time. With world war one being a catalyst farm size grew exponentially with the need to supply efforts overseas. This lead to the need to take out loans to buy expensive machines to work the larger areas. So when the war was over the farmers were still producing at the same quantities to try and maintain their farms. With all of this excess the prices on farm produce dropped to almost nothing. This is lead to many farms being foreclosed on. This was just one area where this happened similar situations occurred in the industrial sector with many

During the 1930s, the United States faced various struggles such as The Great Depression- a time in which farmers suffered severely through many challenges. One of the challenges faced by farmers was the Dust Bowl tragedy; a dust storm affecting many farms throughout the midwest. The tragic Dust Bowl was a consequence due to lack of rainfall in the dry prairie lands, decreasing crop growth, and overproduction in farming causing more exposed land. It occurred because of advancements in farming technology, drought in the Great Plains, and the harvesting of grasslands.

The Great Depression affected many lives of americans and many others outside of the United States. The Great Depression first affected the people who were in the city. Then the depression reached the outsides of the cities and then the rural parts of the country. The wheat prices drop extremely. Then because of the poor farm practices from the many different plows used the Dust Bowl started. The Dust Bowl made it harder for farmers to survive in the Great Depression.

The Great Depression changed the lives of people who lived and farmed on the Great Plains and in turn, changed America. During this time period, many farmers ran out of business because no one could buy their products since many people were out of money.

The 1930s were seasons of extensive hardship on the Great Plains. Settlers managed with the Great Depression, as well as with years of droughts that dove an already suffering society into an attack of tireless dust storms that lasted for months. The Dust bowl conveyed an enormous agrarian and monetary hit to the Great Plains and destroyed what was left of the United States Economy during the Great Depression. It continued for a decade, 1930 to 1939, and wrecked ranches and lives all over Texas, Oklahoma panhandles, Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Canada, and Kansas. Monstrous dust storms wrecked pretty much everything from harvests, overwhelming ranches, in such a way it crushed the income and careers of thousands of farmers.

Arguing that the majority of farmers during the Great Depression benefitted from the government policies produced through President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an inaccurate claim. While history textbooks highlight the improvement of finances for people in rural areas in the United States of America, the personal experiences of family farmers contradict those textbooks. Writers of textbooks about American history should consider looking further into the delicate topic of how the Great Depression effected common farm families. In the West, farmers endured the Dust Bowl. In the North, people in rural areas competed to make a profit. Although statistics show the most economic damage of the Great Depression beginning at the end of 1929, small farm families refer to the effects of the Depression dating back as early as 1925 since government policies mostly benefitted large farm industries as small farms were forced to foreclose.

“This Nation asks for action; and action now” (pg.92). Referring to the New Deal, included was living standards and to prevent future crisis. A goal was to get people back to work. One of the groups that were hit the hardest due to the Great Depression was Farmers. There was an overproduction of products and not enough people consuming or buying their products. Around World War I, prices of crops were very low and the farmers were not making any income, leaving the farmers in trouble when the depression rolled around. With the New Deal, FDR established Agricultural Adjustment Act and prices of crops were raised.

The Dust Bowl brought about substantial negative effects on the economy and agriculture of the Great Plains and aggravated what was left of the American economy during the great Depression. The dust storms ruined everything on the Great Plains including crops and entire farms, hence ruining the careers and livelihoods of many farmers (Egan, 2). As a consequence, the American economy collapsed even more during the Great Depression. The help of the government and training on better farming techniques greatly helped the farmers to get back on their feet. A combination of human actions and environmental factors were responsible for causing the dust storms and in turn, the Dust Bowl made numerous people abandon their homes, suffer, and eventually

Primarily, the Great Depression left millions of people with a lack of money. The Great Depression initiated a serious decline in the world economy which caused businesses to go bankrupt and banks to shut down. In the 4th paragraph of source #1, Hastings states, "With no dependable income, we cut back on everything possible." Victims of the depression had to do everything they could to save money to prevent being stuck without it. This was a serious problem, as described in the 8th paragraph of source #3, "I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory.

One group in this particular article, Farming and the Dust Bowl During the Great Depression, that was affected by the event was the farmers. The reason the farmers were affected, was because when the Dust Bowl hit it was also during the Great Depression and if farmers couldn’t plant crops because the land was dry and currently in drought, which meant that they couldn’t make money, or just simply debt. “In the 1920s, many farmers found themselves in a continual cycle of debt.” (Library of Congress, Ushistory.org) They were also in debt because of expensive equipment and the crash of the stock market. “Their money problems stemmed from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery. When the stock market crashed in 1929, sending

During the beginning of the Great Depression (October 29, 1929 – 1939), the wheat prices can be seen to drop exceedingly fast.

During the Great Depression, Prairies were the absolute place you did not want to be at. In 1929, wheat costs $1.60 a bushel, and in 1932 wheat could not even be sold for $0.38. This impacted their business tremendously. When the world was starting to recover from this devastating event, their misery was not yet over.

After 1927, consumer spending declined and housing construction slowed. Inventories piled up, and in1928 and 1929 manufacturers began to cut back on production and lay off workers. Reduced income and buying power in turn reinforced the downturn. By the summer of 1929 the economy was clearly in a recession. Although the stock market crash and its immediate consequences contributed to the Great Depression, longstanding weakness in the American economy accounted for its length and severity. Agriculture, in particular, had never recovered from the recession of 1920-1921. Farmers faced high fixed costs for equipment and mortgages incurred during the high inflationary war years. At the same time prices fell because of overproduction, forcing farmers to default on mortgage payments and risk foreclosure. Because farmers accounted for about one-forth of the nations gainfully employed workers in 1929, their difficulties weakened the general economic structure. Other industries also had experienced economic setbacks during the prosperous 1920s. The older industries such as textiles, mining, lumbering, and shipping faltered, newer and more successful consumer- based industries, such as chemicals, appliances, and food processing, proved not yet strong enough to lead the way to recovery.

Total unemployment rose from just over three percent in 1929 to just over twenty five percent in 1933, and did not increase back up to just over seventeen percent in 1939. By 1933 wages had fallen in every industry, with construction being affected the worst, where wages had dropped by half. Wages in 1933 were twenty five percent lower than in 1929. These decreases in wages caused decreases in purchasing across the board. Durable and nondurable sales alike decreased. Nondurable goods fell by forty one percent, where durable goods suffered the most and declined by sixty two percent. In the midst of the depression farmers also had a difficult time where usually they would have been able to survive. Unfortunately, the Great Plains were hit hard with both a drought and dust storms. The dust storms destroyed everything in their paths, leaving farmers without their crops. Small farmers were hit the hardest. Even before the dust storms hit, the invention of the tractor drastically cut the need for manpower on farms. The small farms were usually already in debt, borrowing money for seed and paying it back when their crops came in. When the dust storms damaged the crops, not only could the small farmer not feed himself or his family, he could not pay back his debt. Banks would foreclose on the farms and the farmer and his family would be both homeless and unemployed. Millions of people were out of work across the United States. Many people hit the road