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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Planning has always been regarded as a matter for the experts. Laymen affected by the plans have usually participated in the process only by accepting or rejecting through their representatives planning projects drawn up by technicians. The necessary importance of the rôle of technicians and the inevitable conflict between technical considerations, which must determine the recommendations of the experts, and political considerations, which must determine the attitude of representatives, have led many to regard the whole idea of systematic planning (in any large field of production) as undemocratic in its general trend. The whole idea of planning, they insist, points necessarily toward bureaucratic centralization of responsibility. The significance of the recently launched County Land Use Planning program lies in the effort to achieve from the first stages of the process and at the most local levels of organization that fusion between the skill and experience of the expert and the political choices of laymen which is the essence of modern democracy. Decentralization and localization of planning is, of course, particularly essential in agriculture because of the need to adapt methods for attaining general objectives to widely varying sectional differences. At the same time, lay participation in agricultural planning can mean widespread participation because of the wide spread of individual responsibility for individual farm enterprises. It may well be, therefore, that the lessons to be learned from this experiment in democratic planning for agriculture are not readily transferable to other fields of productive enterprise. That is a question that I must leave to others.
2 “Joint Statement by the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities and the United States Department of Agriculture on Building Agricultural Land Use Programs,” July 8, 1938; reproduced in Gaus, J. M. and Wolcott, L. O., Public Administration and the Department of Agriculture (Chicago, 1940), pp. 463–465Google Scholar, and discussed briefly on pp. 157–159.
3 This point appears frequently in explanations of the County Land Use Planning program by members of the Department. See, e.g., Allin, Bushrod W., “The County Planning Project—A Cooperative Approach to Agricultural Planning,” address, Annual Meeting, American Farm Economic Association, Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1939 (mimeo., U.S.D.A., B.A.E.).Google ScholarBall, Carleton R. gives a detailed description of various types of coöperative relationships in Federal, State, and Local Administrative Relationships in Agriculture (2 vols., Berkeley, 1938).Google Scholar
4 The broad scope of this new legislation is indicated by a mere enumeration of the basic acts which had been added to existent agricultural legislation by 1938. New legislation included the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, the Sugar Act of 1937, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938, the Marketing Agreements Act of 1937, the Surplus Commodities Acts of 1937 and 1938, the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937, the Soil Conservation Act of 1935, the Flood Control Acts of 1936, 1937, and 1938, the Farm Forestry Act of 1937, the Pope-Jones Act of 1937 dealing with a water facilities program, and the Bankhead-Jones Act of 1938, which enlarged the program of agricultural research. U.S.D.A., “Memorandum for Chiefs of Bureaus and Offices,” Oct. 6, 1938 (mimeo.); reproduced in Gaus and Wolcott, pp. 466–475.
5 Ibid., p. 3; Gaus and Wolcott, p. 469.
6 Elsewhere the general objective of the County Land Use Planning program is stated thus: “to provide for the fusion of farmer, technical, and administrative views throughout the process of program and policy creation, beginning with the local community…. Such plans and policies are designed to secure the coördination and correlation of public and group action at community, county, state, and national bases, and for the translation of appropriate conclusions on desirable agricultural adjustments into specific plans and programs for local, state, and departmental action agencies.” U.S.D.A., Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1939, p. 3.Google Scholar
7 Cf. Clark, Dale, “The Farmer as Co-Administrator,” Public Opinion Quarterly, July, 1939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 “Memorandum for Chiefs of Bureaus and Offices,” Oct. 6, 1938, pp. 3–4; Gaus and Wolcott, p. 469. “If sound democratic policy is to be made, it must be initiated in local discussions participated in by leaders of farm, industrial, labor, and professional groups in their home towns. Where such discussion takes place, the give-and-take, the bargain, the compromise that is the characteristic mark of democracy is continually going on in local arguments, local conversations. The process of moderation is continually minimizing what appear to be irreconcilable differences in interest.” Wilson, M. L., Democracy Has Roots (New York, 1939), p. 114.Google Scholar The interpretation of democracy in action which this provocative little book suggests is in general the interpretation on which the Land Use Planning program was based.
9 This description is summarized from the following documents: the Mt. Weather Agreement; U.S.D.A., “County Land Use Planning Work Outline Number 1,” Jan., 1939 (mimeo.)Google Scholar; U.S.D.A., “Memorandum for Chiefs of Bureaus and Offices,” Oct. 6, 1938; U.S.D.A., Form for a “Memorandum of Understanding between the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture, and [the Agricultural Extension Service and Experiment Station of a particular state],” Feb. 18, 1939 (mimeo.)Google Scholar; U.S.D.A., “Memorandum of Understanding” between the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and “the Operating Agencies of the Department of Agriculture,” March 11, 1939 (mimeo.)Google Scholar; U.S.D.A., Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1939, pp. 1–5.Google Scholar
10 The heads of the following agencies are included: Office of Land Use Coördination, B.A.E., Extension Service, A.A.A., F.S.A., S.C.S., Forestry Service, Agricultural Marketing Service, F.C.A., R.E.A., and Commodity Credit Corporation. The Under Secretary, Assistant Secretary, First and Second Assistants to the Secretary, Director of Research, Solicitor, Director of Budget and Finance, and Director of Personnel are also members. Since the creation of the Program Board, the Secretary of Agriculture has almost invariably attended its meetings.
11 U.S.D.A., “County Land Use Planning Work Outline Number 1.”
12 Three stages of planning work are designated. The first, “preparatory,” is “designed to acquaint county agents and local planning committees with the scope and objectives of land use planning.” The second stage, “intensive” planning work, in volves the mapping and classification of land areas in the county and the formulation of long-time plans and immediate recommendations for land use. In the “unified” stage, efforts are made to translate plans into action. U.S.D.A., Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1939, p. 4.Google Scholar
13 The following description of procedure in Teton county, Mont., gives a concrete illustration of the procedure at this stage:
“After the intensive county report containing these recommendations was finished in July, 1939, the county committee sent copies to the state land use planning committee, and to the federal and state agencies interested in land use programs in the county. Each agency was asked to look the report over, and to prepare a statement giving its opinion on the recommendations, and suggesting methods, if possible, by which it might carry out specific recommendations.
“Then the county committee, working closely with the representatives of the agencies of the Department of Agriculture, further analyzed the recommendations, and agreed on the general direction the changes should take. At the same time, the subcommittees on special problems, aided by technicians of the state college and the Department of Agriculture, were studying in detail the problems of the county and possible recommendations.
“The first unified agricultural program report for Teton county was prepared in January, 1940. It told of the aims of the planning committees, the problems they are trying to solve, and the proposed solutions. Special attention was given to the ways farmers and local, state, and federal agencies can work together toward these solutions.” U.S.D.A., Land Use Planning Under Way, July, 1940, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar
14 This procedure is described in U.S.D.A., “Memorandum for the Secretary Re: Procedure for Developing a Unified County (or Area) Program,” Feb. 2, 1939 U.S.D.A. (mimeo.).Google Scholar
15 U.S.D.A., B.A.E., and Extension Service, “Report on the Progress of Land-Use Planning During 1939,” Jan. 31, 1940 (mimeo.), pp. 7, 14.Google Scholar In all, 1,195 counties had been selected for planning during 1939–40, and of these 765 had been designated as “intensive” planning counties. Ibid., p. 12.
16 Ibid., p. 7; U.S.D.A., Land Use Planning Under Way, p. 10.Google Scholar
17 Most of the factual material reported here was collected during the first five months of 1940.
18 The Mt. Weather Agreement speaks of “community and neighborhood planning committees” which should “form the cornerstone of the whole planning organization,” and in the first work outline prepared in the Department as a guide to county committees there is further emphasis upon the importance of having preliminary mapping and classification done on a community basis.
19 The distribution of completed community surveys in December, 1940, was as follows: Virginia, about 25 counties; Arkansas, 17 counties; North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, about 15 counties each; Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, from 1 to 3 counties each. These figures are taken from a memorandum prepared by Dr. Douglas Ensminger, of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare, and released to the writer by Dr. Frank Cronin, acting head of the Division (Dec. 31, 1940).
20 Dr. Ensminger believes that planning work would be facilitated, even in the northeastern and mid-western states, if the basis of organization were the social community instead of the town or township, since community boundaries do not always correspond to the boundaries of a town or township.
21 See the discussion of wider participation in urban planning by Buttenheim, H. S., “Planning Needs the Man in the Street,” National Municipal Review, Vol. 28 (1939), 832 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 U.S.D.A., B.A.E. and Extension Service, County Planning Series, No. 2, Membership of Land Use Planning Committees (April, 1940), p. 1.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., p. 7. Cf. also U.S.D.A., Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1939, p. 5.Google Scholar
24 The states studied were Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Maine. Of these, the writer visited all but three for personal interviews with B.A.E. and Extension Service workers engaged in organizing the program.
25 Texas, West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, Kansas.
26 E.g., in Lee county, Ala., 65 per cent of the farmers are Negroes, 72 per cent are tenants, 53 per cent of the tenants are sharecroppers. There are, of course, no Negroes on the county committee; there are no croppers; there are “a few” tenants. Seventy-five per cent of land leases are merely verbal agreements, usually for one year. The committee's report contains very little on tenancy problems and no recommendations concerning leases. In Greene county, Ga., 52.5 per cent of the population are Negroes; 27.6 per cent of the farm operators are sharecroppers, and 73.7 per cent are tenants (including croppers). There are, of course, no Negroes on the county committee; there are no croppers; there are tenants who operate large units. The committee was of the opinion that about 20 per cent of the white tenants and 10 per cent of the colored were capable at present of operating farms as owners. The report did not explain the basis of these estimates. On the general background, cf. Johnson, C. S., Embree, E. R., and Alexander, W. W., The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1935).Google Scholar
27 U.S.D.A., Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1939, p. 5.Google Scholar
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