ARE WE SOLVING OUR FARM PROBLEM?

Agricultural and Food Policy,

UNDERINVESTMENT IN THE QUALITY OF SCHOOLING: THE RURAL FARM AREAS

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

The Agricultural Emergency in Iowa, X. Shrink Agriculture or Shift Tariff Protected Industries

Our foreign trade is at present badly disrupted. A tariff crisis is today strangling international trade. Domestic farm prices show the consequences. In agriculture bankruptcy has become well-nigh universal. At the same time our debtors abroad, both public and private, are forced to default. The loss of the foreign markets, moreover, has destroyed the fundamental balance between agriculture and industry in our national economic life. There are, however, several correctives at work mending the fabric of foreign trade. But it is important to observe that the burden of these correctives falls with ruthless severity upon the American farmer. In substance, the adjustments now taking place in foreign trade are simply reducing the exports of commodities from the United States enough to balance our international incoming and outgoing payments to fit our creditor position. What, then, can be done to relieve this undue pressure on American agriculture? This circular is essentially an examination of the only principal alternative, namely, the lowering of our tariff wall. The consequences of tariff adjustments, as a means of restoring our foreign trade, are considered in this study. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic analysis set forth in Circular 146 (No. VIII of this series), How Tariffs Affect Farm Prices, because it is important to understand how the creditor position of the United States bears upon foreign trade and the whole problem· of tariffs

The Nub of the Farm Problem

America still has a farm problem, though wartime prosperity has hidden it for the time being. The problem, simple stated, is this: Farm produce supplies are out-running demand. The main forces responsible are: (1) a slackening in the increase of population, (2) the fact that people spend smaller proportions of their incomes for farm products as they grow richer and (3) the revolution in agricultural production methods

Prospects for agricultural recovery V. Is our national farm plant too large?

The Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed to correct the economic situation that is depressing American agriculture.2 The aim of the Act is to restore and increase the buying power of our farm people. The Act is looked upon as an integral part of the whole recovery program of the federal government. In general, that part of the recovery program set forth in the farm act, is based very largely on the assumption that our national farm plant is too large—that there is a serious maladjustment between the output of our farms and the effective demand for food and other raw materials produced on farms. Farm people, and students of farm problems, are called upon to evaluate the soundness of the broad economic policies laid down in the Agricultural Adjustment Act. But there can be no correct appraisal of these policies without first thoroughly understanding the economic data and the economic theory which provide the most reasonable explanation of the factors responsible for the emergency, and depression in agriculture.

Farm tenure in Iowa: III. The National Farm Institute Symposium on land tenure (Held at Des Moines, Iowa, Feb. 19 and 20, 1937)

In one of the classrooms at the University of Wisconsin, a room frequently used by Professors Hibbard and Commons, hangs a large, black, depressing picture of a man and a woman, poor, poverty stricken, carrying a few bundles. Beneath the picture in bold letters there is inscribed the word, “Landless.” This picture reminds one of historical accounts of the plight of the exploited and evicted Irish farmers. It is hard in these days of surpluses, overproduction, and areas once suitable for agriculture now distinctly marginal, to understand why land was so important to these people. Or why the virtual monopoly of land by absentee owners became so oppressive

The lard market at home and abroad

The price of onions in Abyssinia may not mean a great deal to the Iowa farmer, but the price of lard in Germany does. This is because about one-third of the American commercial lard produced is exported, and the Iowa farmer depends upon hogs for about two-fifths of his income, and lard represents about one-fifth of the value of the live hog. Naturally, he should be interested in every possible means to profitably dispose of lard. (See fig. 1.) The two basic factors which influence the price, of lard— indirectly influence the prices paid to the farmer for his hogs— are the domestic market and the foreign market for lard