Historical Interpretations

"For all their good intentions, these programs didn't always help the people they were intended to help. The AAA sought to pay farmers to keep their field fallow and limit overproduction. However, it doesn't quite work out as intended, especially in the South, because this act primarily targeted people who were landowners. Larger farms, of course, received the most benefit. The majority of farms in the South were very, very small; they were about 20 acres. And not all of that land was cleared and cultivated. The majority of farms in the South received very small amounts of money. Nearly half the farmers in the South got less than $40 in benefits from the government in 1938 -- hardly enough to raise people's standard of living a whole lot. Compare that to the British-owned Delta and Pine Land Company in the Mississippi Delta, which was a large agribusiness. In 1938, they were paid $114,480 by the federal government not to use their land. The difference in benefits could be quite staggering. In addition, most farmers didn't have enough land to take out of cultivation to actually receive a benefit that was going to help them in any measurable way.

"The federal government also developed New Deal loan programs. Farm credit programs could drastically reduce the cost of borrowing, which was very important if you were considered a good risk by the federal government. The people who weren't a good risk tended to be the people most at the margins who most needed help, and they didn't access those programs. Many people who could have benefited from those programs were shut out.

"Of course, all these subsidies and land programs only applied to farmers who owned their land. As we know, much of the agriculture in the South around this time was tenant farming and sharecropping -- people who farmed land in exchange for a share of their crop. If you were a tenant or a sharecropper, the AAA didn't help you at all. The government had hoped that landowners would pass those subsidies down to their tenants, but they didn't. If the tenant was lucky, the landowner would agree to use the subsidy to reduce their debt. But not all of them did that. Instead, landowners who had substantial amounts of land [and who received a lot of money] from the federal government used that money to purchase mechanized farm equipment. It was the first time they had enough capital to do that. Once they were able to purchase tractors and [other equipment], they didn't need sharecroppers and tenants any more. And that pushed people off the land.

"As a result of the AAA, the very poorest farmers tended to lose their positions. Between 1930 and 1940, more than 300,000 sharecroppers lost their positions or were forced to become day laborers or worse."