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In 1930 the impact of the stock market crash of October 1929 was beginning to be felt in rural America. The price per bushel for wheat and corn plummeted more than 25 percent in a single year. As the depression continued, prices for almost all agricultural products dropped even further. The number of acres harvested and the yields per acre also fell for many crops during the first years of the depression due to severe flooding in some parts of the country, and widespread drought in others. -
During the first half of the 1930s much of the nation faced devastating drought. Numerous dust storms swept away valuable layers of topsoil across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. These dust storms were made worse by the practice of plowing fields and leaving the soil exposed before planting in the spring. The relentlessly blowing winds turned these areas into the "Dust Bowl." Thousands of farmers were forced to move from the "dust blown deserts of shattered dreams." -
In March 1933, Henry A. Wallace took office as the newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture. His roots lay in Iowa, a large farming estate. He was a farmer, as well as a geneticist and farm philosopher. Through his family newspaper, Wallaces Farmer, he had peppered rural America with new ideas aimed at solving their problems. Yet he knew that "no plan could be perfect," and his first big move, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, was bitterly opposed. -
President Roosevelt sent direct aid to provide relief for the hungry and homeless in the dust bowl. Hugh Hammond Bennett, a soil conservationist and USDA scientist, fought to bring the problem of erosion to national attention.The Soil Conservation Act was passed immediately after a dust storm from the Midwest engulfed the Capitol in April 1935. This new law declared soil erosion a menace to the national welfare and authorized broad powers to attack the problem. -
Agricultural improvements continued with new research in plant and animal science, human nutrition, soil conservation, and research into new food and agricultural products. When Congress passed the G.I. Bill in 1944, providing Veterans with educational and other benefits, enrollment in land grant colleges soared. More men and women graduated and took agricultural jobs off the farm with the goal of feeding the world. Major changes in the field of agriculture lay on the horizon. -
Former USDA Secretary Henry A. Wallace had once said that the U.S. has a "moral responsibility to feed the hungry people of the world." The United States sent millions of tons of food abroad to prevent mass famine in the years after the war. Under the Marshall Plan livestock, seed, fertilizer and farm machinery were also sent overseas to help rebuild Europe’s agricultural system and European farmers visited the United States to learn American farming techniques.