Historical Timeline — 1930

Economic Cycles

1929-39
Great Depression

Farm Economy

1932
Farm prices and income reach Depression bottom

Farmers & the Land

1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252

1932-36
Drought and dust-bowl conditions develop

1934
Executive orders withdraw public lands from settlement, location, sale, or entry; Taylor Grazing Act

Farm Machinery & Technology

1930-39
Commercial fertilizer use: 6,599,913 tons/year

1930s
All-purpose, rubber-tired tractor with complementary machinery popularized

1930
One farmer supplies, on average, 9.8 in the United States and abroad; 15-20 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (2 1/2 acres) of corn with 2-bottom gang plow, 7-foot tandem disk, 4-section harrow, 2-row planters, cultivators, and pickers; 15-20 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat with 3-bottom gang plow, tractor, 10-foot tandem disk, harrow, 12-foot combine, and trucks

Crops & Livestock

1930-35
Use of hybrid-seed corn becomes common in the Corn Belt

1934
Thatcher wheat distributed; Landrace hogs imported from Denmark

1938
Cooperative organized for artificial insemination of dairy cattle

Transportation

1930s
Farm-to-market roads emphasized in Federal road building

1938
Motor Carried Act brings trucking under ICC regulation

Agricultural Trade & Development

1930-39
Agricultural exports: $765 million/year or 32% of total exports

1930
Hawley-Smoot tariff raises rates to prohibitive levels, prompting retaliation from other countries

1939
Technical agricultural collaboration with South American countries

Life on the Farm

1930
13% of all farms have electricity

1936
Rural Electrification Act (REA) greatly improves quality of rural life

Farm Organizations & Movements

1930
11,950 cooperative with 3 million members

1932-23
Farmers' Holiday movement stages strikes and blocks farm sales

1934
Southern Tenant Farmers Union formed to cope with sharecroppers displaced during the New Deal

Agricultural Education & Extension

1935
Bankhead-Jones Agricultural Research Act more than doubles Federal support of extension work

Government Programs & Policy

Early 1930s
First Federal assistance to school lunch program

1933
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) initiates crop and marketing controls; Farm Credit Act

1935
AAA amended to provide marketing orders and continuing funds for removal of agricultural surpluses; resettlement Administration created to combat rural poverty, leads to 1946 Farmers Home Administration

1936
Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act follows Hoosac Mills decision

1937
Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act

1938
Agricultural Adjustment Act provides acreage allotments and quotas, ever-normal granary, price-supporting loans, regional research laboratories, and Federal crop insurance

1939
Food stamp plan begun