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
