How Successful Was The Agricultural Adjustment Act

It is no question that agricultural workers have one of the most physically demanding jobs in the world. The situation for farmers was complicated in 1932, because there was a surplus of commodities in the market. The depressed state of the world food market caused the purchasing power of farmers to dwindle. As a result, the U.S. government passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in hopes of restoring purchasing power to farmers by reducing surpluses in crops, livestock and giving farmers cash payments for controlling how much crops they would grow. The Agricultural Adjustment Act proved to be successful because the overall value of crops and livestock increased, consequently increasing the purchasing power of farmers in 1934. The Agricultural
As the Agricultural Adjustment Act took these actions many people began to fear that the program could be abused by farmers to create profit for themselves in expense of the government's treasury. The idea was that farmers would grow a certain crop and the government would pay them to get rid of it. The farmer would then use the money given to them by the government and buy more of that specific crop, this cycle would be repeated until the farmer would make bigger profits slowly sucking away at the government's treasury. Although this seems to be a very solid counterclaim to belittle the effectiveness of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, it was easily evaded. For example, before the farmer could receive payments from the government for getting rid of a certain crop the farmer would need to accept a voluntary contract with the government, which states that producers would need to agree to keep production levels to what the Department of Agriculture had established for them. This would protect the program from being abused by farmers, but also help efficiently lower surpluses of crops because it would help regulate how much of a crop was put on the market. As a result, of farmers increased income they could spend more money on consumer goods helping boost the
The Agricultural Adjustment Act took action to reduce surpluses with a purchasing program developed by Henry Wallace, which in a few months had bought over 6 million hogs; prices ranging from $6-$9.50. These hogs would be butchered or simply killed and disposed of. The program did this in hopes of increasing the value of hogs in the market by decreasing their abundance. Although, this action caused a lot of hysteria throughout the public as some were outraged that--during one of the United States lowest points--hogs were being killed; this had then caused people to say it was a waste of meat at America's greatest time of hunger. However, because the United States had a surplus of crops and food, there was no real problem with eliminating the extra food to help stabilize the value of hogs and help increase the purchasing power of farmers as said by Henry Wallace in a press conference in Des Moines. The average price of a hog in December 1932 was 2.73 dollars per hundred pounds, but as the program took action in destroying surpluses the average cost of hogs in 1934 became four dollars, plus an additional payment of 2.25 per hundred pounds that was given to farmers for taking part in the program. This purchasing program introduced by the Agricultural Adjustment Act proved to be successful