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Regulation and Response: Kansas Wheat Farmers and the New Deal1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2007

PETER FEARON
PETER FEARON*
Affiliation:
School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE, 7RH
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Abstract

This paper analyses the response of Kansas wheat growers to major market intervention brought about by New Deal farm policies. Congress hoped to trigger a sharp price increase by persuading farmers to reduce the acreage on which they cultivated wheat. However, the actual responses in terms of planting strategies and farm machinery purchases are complex and only evident once the analysis is conducted at the county level. Marked regional variations in the impact of the weather during the ‘Dust Bowl’ decade also played a crucial role in this analysis. This article shows that even when considering a crop grown in a single state, the reaction of farmers to policy initatives can be varied and very difficult to predict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , October 2007 , pp. 245 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

Notes

2 Kansas State Board of Agriculture (KSBA), 26th Biennial Report (1927–28), p. 470.

3 Sally Clarke, ‘New Deal Regulation and the Revolution in American Farm Productivity: A Case Study of the Tractor in the Corn Belt, 1920–1940’, The Journal of Economic History, 51 (March 1991), 101–123 and Regulation and the Revolution in American Farm Productivity, (New York, 1994); Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, ‘Reshaping the Landscape: The Impact and Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture, 1910–1960’, The Journal of Economic History, 61 (September 2001), 663–98; Warren C. Whatley, ‘A History of Mechanisation in the Cotton South: The Institutional Hypothesis’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 100 (November 1985), 1191–1215; William White, ‘An Unsung Hero: The Farm Tractor's Contribution to Twentieth Century United Sates Economic Growth’, The Journal of Economic History, 61 (June 2001), 493–6.

4 L.J. Norton, ‘Wheat Marketing in the United States’, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists, 1930 (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1930), pp. 566–9.

5 Leslie Hewes, The Suitcase Farming Frontier: A Study in the Historical Geography of the Great Plains (Lincoln Neb., 1973), pp. 55–7, 65–6, 195.

6 The annual figures for winter wheat acreage sown and harvested as well as the quantity and the value of output are available for each county in the Biennial Reports of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture.

7 M. Evans, ‘Land Use Planning in Western Kansas’, Kansas State Board of Agriculture (KSBA), 31st Biennial Report, 1937–8, p. 33.

8 M.R. Cooper and M.S. Washburn, ‘Cost of Producing Wheat’, (USDA Bull No 943. April 1921), 10–11; L.M. Hoover and John H. McCoy, ‘Economic Factors that Affect Wheat in Kansas’, (Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Bull No 369. January 1955), 6–8; L.M. Hoover, ‘Kansas Agriculture after 100 Years’, (Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science Bull No 392. August 1957), 27–34; ‘Climate of Kansas’, USDA Yearbook of Agriculture (Washington DC, 1941) pp. 873–3.

9 Hewes, Suitcase Farming Frontier, pp. 68–9; L. M. Hoover, ‘Kansas Agriculture’, 8–9.

10 Hoover and McCoy, ‘Economic Factors’, 9–12.

11 The tractor and combine numbers are available annually for each county in the Biennial Reports of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture.

12 Peter Fearon, ‘Mechanisation and Risk : Kansas Wheat Growers 1915–1930’, Rural History, 6 (1995), 229–50, gives a full account of the pre-1930 wheat economy.

13 W.F. MacGregor, ‘The Combined Harvester-Thresher’, Agricultural Engineering, 6 (May 1925) 100–02; Leland W. Zink, ‘The Agricultural Power Take-Off’, Agricultural Engineering, 12 (1931) 209–10; W.E. Grimes, R.S. Kifer. and J.A. Holmes, ‘The Effect of the Combined Harvester-Thresher on Farm Organisation in South-Western Kansas and North-Western Oklahoma’, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, (Circular No. 142, July 1928), 11–13; L.A. Reynoldson, R.S. Kifer, J.H. Martin and W.R. Humphries, ‘The Combined Harvester-Thresher on the Great Plains’ (USDA, Washington DC Technical Bulletin No. 7, February 1928), 59; W.E. Grimes, ‘Social and Economic Aspects of Large-Scale Farming in the Wheat Belt’, Journal of Farm Economics, 13 (1931), 22–3; W.E. Grimes, ‘The Effect of the Combined Harvester-Thresher on Farming in the Wheat Growing Region’, Scientific Agriculture 9, 12 (August 1929), 173–4; Roy B. Gray. and E. M. Dieffenbach, ‘Fifty Years of Tractor Development in the U.S.A.’, Agricultural Engineering, 38 (1957), 393–5.

14 D.C. Horton, H.C. Larsen. and N.J. Wall, ‘Farm Mortgage Credit Facilities in the United States’ (USDA Misc. Publication No.478 1942), 219–21; ‘Farm Real Estate Situation 1929–30’ USDA Circular 150, December 1930, 37.

15 For an explanation of the origins of the Dust Bowl see: Zeynep Hansen and Gary Libecap, ‘Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s’, Journal of Political Economy, 112 (June 2004), 665–94.

16 For a good contemporary account of the rationale of the farm programme see: Mordecai Ezekiel and Louis H. Bean, Economic Bases for the Agricultural Adjustment Act, (USDA, Washington DC, 1933).

17 For example, the newly established Commodity Credit Corporation provided price support loans only to participating farmers.

18 The complexities of the wheat programme, including the local variations on allotment calculation, are explained in: Sherman Johnson, Wheat Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Developments up to June 1934 (Brookings Institution Pamphlet Series No. 14. Washington DC 1934) pp. 10–23; for the application of these complexities to Kansas see: R. Douglas Hurt, ‘Prices, Payments and Production. Kansas Wheat Farmers and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 1933–39’, Kansas History, 23 (2000), 72–87.

19 Kansas Union Farmer, 21st September 1933.

20 Johnson, Wheat Under the Agricultural Adjustment, pp. 57–8.

21 The scheme favoured large owners over small and all owners rather than tenants. Of about 160,000 farms in Kansas some 70,000 were operated by tenants. However, approximately thirty per cent of tenants were related to their landlord. W.E. Grimes, ‘Farm Tenancy in Kansas’, KSBA 32nd Biennial Report, (1939–41), 61–7.

22 M.L. Robinson, ‘The Response of Kansas Farmers to the Wheat Adjustment Program’, Journal of Farm Economics, 19 (1937), 359–62.

23 Henry A. Wallace to Capper, 23rd January 1934. Farm Relief (22–1) Wheat Acreage Reduction RG16, National Archives, Washington DC; Kansas Union Farmer, 7th December 1933.

24 Johnson, Wheat Under the Agricultural Adjustment, pp. 24–6.

25 Morris Evans, ‘Land Use Planning in Western Kansas’, KSBA, 36th Biennial Report 1937–38, pp. 36–8

26 KSBA, 38th Biennial Report (1951–52), p. 409.

27 K.H. McGill et al., ‘A Survey of Hodgeman County, Kansas’, FERA Survey of Rural Problem Areas Short Grass-Dry Farming region, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, August 1,1934, National Archives RG83.

28 KSBA, 29th Biennial Report 1934–35.

29 K.H. McGill et al., ‘A Survey of Meade County, Kansas’, 11th August 1934.

30 O.S. Rayner, et al., ‘A Survey of Sherman County Kansas’, August 1934.

31 Johnson, Wheat Under the Agricultural Adjustment, pp. 92–3.

32 Wallace to Hon. Clifford R. Hope, 12th April 1934. Farm Relief (22–1) Wheat Acreage Reduction, National Archives RG16.

33 Earl H. Bell, Culture of a Contemporary Rural Community. Sublette Kansas (USDA Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Rural Life Studies #2. September 1942), p. 34.

34 Hazel Bland, ‘Survey of Current Changes in the Rural Relief Population, June 1935. Neosho County’, Rural Problem Reports. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, National Archives RG83.

35 J. Smith, ‘A Kansas Wheat Improvement Plan’ (Report of KSBA quarter ending March 1938), 44.

36 T.J. Pressly and W.H. Scofield, eds., Farm Real Estate Values in the United States by Counties, 1850–1959 (Seattle, 1965), pp. 40–42.

37 H.L. Stewart, ‘Changes in Wheat Farms in South-Western Kansas, 1931–37’, USDA, Farm Management Report No.7 (June 1940), 11, 17, 28, 36–8.

38 R.I. Throckmorton, ‘The Wheat Adjustment Program’ (KSBA Report for quarter ending March 1934), 86–8.

39 D.F. Hadwiger, Federal Wheat Commodity Programs (Ames Iowa), pp. 152–66.

40 W.M. Smith, ‘Reaction of Kansas Farmers to New Deal Farm Programs’, (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois, 1960), pp. 152–5, 170–1.

41 Hadwiger, Federal Wheat Commodity Programs, pp. 60–61.

42 Stewart, ‘Changes in Wheat Farms’, 26, 28.

43 KSBA, 38th Biennial Report, (1951–52), p. 408.

44 Z.R. Pettet, ‘The Farm Horse’, US Department of Commerce, Fifteenth Census of the United States. Census of Agriculture (Washington DC, 1933), pp. 1–83.

45 KSBA, Price Patterns. Price Patterns Received by Kansas Farmers, 1910–1955, (Manhattan Ks., June 1957), p. 82.

46 KSBA, Price Patterns, pp. 82–3.

47 R.B. Elwood, C.D. Arnold, C.D. Schmutz and E.G. McKibben, ‘Changes in Technology and Labor Requirements in Crop Production’ (Works Progress Administration, National Research Report No.A-10 April 1939), p. 29.

48 Paul Bonnifield, The Dust Bowl. Men, Dirt and Depression, (Albuquerque, 1979); R. Douglas Hurt, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History (Chicago, 1981); Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Rooted in Dust. Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas, (Lawrence Ks., 1994); Michael E. Schuyler, The Dread of Plenty: Agricultural Relief Activities of the Federal Government in the Middle West, 1933–1939 (Manhattan, Ks, 1989); Lawrence Svobida, Farming the Dust Bowl (Lawrence, Ks, 1986); Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Great Plains in the 1930s (New York, 1979).

49 Final Statistical Report of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Washington DC, 1942), p. 165.

50 Riney-Kehrberg, Rooted in Dust, pp. 102–3.

51 Clarke argues that New Deal regulation created a safer climate for investment and this was the major factor, rather than market prices or technological advances, which explains the rise in tractor ownership amongst Iowa farmers during the 1930s. Sally Clarke, ‘The Diffusion of the Tractor in the Corn Belt, 1920–1940’, Journal of Economic History, 51 (1991), 119.