The 1920 Census showing that the U.S. had become a majority urban nation led to concerns about the ability of U.S. agriculture to be productive enough to feed its citizens. The response was multi-pronged. The Department of Agriculture began supporting research to improve productivity with new seed varieties and mechanization. There was also a focus on developing and improving infrastructure like railroads and highways that moved food from farms to urban areas.
But all of that would be useless if people continued to leave farms to work and live in cities, a problem that became very real during the Great Depression. Prices were so low that farmers couldn’t make a living let alone make payments on their farm loans. “No farms, No food” became a very real possibility. So the government passed legislation to provide support to farmers and ranchers.
The Agricultural Adjustment Acts of 1933 and 1938 established a system of price supports for specific crops, such as cotton, wheat, corn, and tobacco. The government would purchase these crops at a set price if market prices fell too low, helping stabilize farmers’ incomes. The government set quotas for certain crops, limiting the amount that farmers could produce to avoid overproduction, which would cause prices to fall. If farmers exceeded the quotas, they faced penalties. The legislation also focused on conservation, creating programs to encourage soil conservation and reduce soil erosion, a necessity if the U.S. wanted to have the resources necessary to grow food. The program provided financial assistance for planting cover crops and other soil-preserving methods. Farmers who participated in the programs, including crop allotments and soil conservation efforts, were eligible for subsidies. This helped to ensure compliance and encourage the adoption of practices aimed at restoring economic balance to agriculture.
In 1936, to further improve the lives of farmers and ranchers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Association. The agency was part of the Department of Agriculture and was responsible for providing loans for electrical systems in rural areas. The REA’s work helped bring electricity to most farms by the 1950s. (My parents have both told me how their lives changed for the better, when as high schoolers, their farms finally got electricity.) In 1994, Congress established the RUS to take over the REA’s responsibilities for rural electrification and telephone service. Today, these member-owned cooperatives purchase power wholesale and distribute it to their members.
Inflation Reduction Act Extends This Agriculture Policy
Passed in August of 2022, this bill included $40 billion for agriculture, forestry, and rural development. Nearly $20 billion went to the Natural Resources Conservation Service to fund the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), plus technical assistance. In addition, it includes $14 billion for rural development to support the development of renewable energy and spending on biofuels infrastructure. The bill also provides $4 billion to mitigate the impacts of drought in the Western Reclamation states, with priority given to the Colorado River Basin and other basins experiencing comparable levels of long-term drought. It is these programs that are currently frozen.
Handouts or Good Agriculture Policy?
Historically, the goals of agriculture policy were to ensure a living wage for farmers, prevent sharp fluctuations in food prices for farmers and consumers, and encourage sustainable farm practices to maintain a stable food supply. Today, it also ensures that farmers are supported as stewards of the land and key contributors to the nation’s food security.
Of course, there are different opinions about how this should be done. In fact, there are folks out there, even farmers and, as we saw last week in the comments, a Program Administrator for a Soil and Water Conservation District, who call these “Handouts.” As an alternative opinion, I offer Will Westmoreland from one of his recent videos:
“If I hear another person accuse these farmers of taking welfare…
These programs we’re talking about guys are not the welfare subsidies that you get whenever your crops die in the field or there’s drought or there’s pests or there’s fungus.
These are programs that were taken advantage of because the federal government came to Farmers and said ‘Can you help do the right thing in regard to the environment? Our cold weather grasses are not growing as well anymore because of climate change we need more rotational grazing so that our grasses can become stronger and we can graze more cattle in a better way. We need to distribute water across our farms and ranches so that we can do rotational grazing we need cover crops to prevent our soils from running off and to process carbon to help with climate change.’
And it was the American Farmer and Rancher that stepped up and said ‘Yeah, I’ll do that and I’ll even pay for part of it. The only thing I’m asking you to do is to reimburse me through these programs that exist.’
It was a partnership not a welfare handout. And now these people could lose their farms and ranches.”
You can watch this video of Will here. Note that he uses some adult language.
I am currently unclear what this administration’s agriculture policy is, but it appears that it is strongly influenced by Project 2025. (You can read more about those potential impacts to farmers here.) If you’re affected by frozen funds or are interested in agriculture policy and would like to have some influence on its direction, you might consider following Will Westmoreland. Will grew up on a large farm in Missouri, running cow-calf pairs. Today he is an agroforester with his own farm and also a political consultant. He has been having conversations with Skylar Holden, the young farmer in Missouri who is worried that he’ll lose his farm if he is not reimbursed for the work he did under an IRA-funded contract. He shares these and other messages on his TikTok and Youtube channels.
Will’s primary message is that farmers should be part of creating the policies that affect them and rural communities. You can reach him here at The Back Forty.
I hope this little bit of history has added some context to your understanding of where we are today in our support of farmers and ranchers doing the most important work there is: raising food for the country and the world. Thank you for what you do.
