Agricultural Adjustment Act Facts & Worksheets

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Federal legislation known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was enacted in 1933 as part of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s New Deal. The law gave farmers incentives to reduce the number of crops they produced. To reduce overproduction and raise agricultural prices, they established incentives.

See the fact file below for more information about the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), or download the comprehensive worksheet pack, which contains over 11 worksheets and can be used in the classroom or homeschooling environment. 

Key Facts & Information

Background

• When he took office in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States led the country through the worst of the Great Depression. “Farmers faced the most difficult economic climate and the lowest crop prices” since the 1890s.
• The goal of the Roosevelt administration was to reduce agricultural surpluses. The original statute included wheat, cotton, field corn, pigs, rice, tobacco, and milk and its byproducts as essential commodities.
• They further enlarged the list of essential commodities in 1934 and 1935 to include rye, flax, barley, grain sorghum, livestock, peanuts, sugar beets, sugar cane, and potatoes.

Goals and Implementations

• The Agricultural Adjustment Act used various techniques to restore farm buying power of agricultural commodities or the fair exchange value of a product based on price compared to the prewar 1909–14 level.
• At the same time, Congress made it clear that it wanted to safeguard consumer interests. To achieve the agricultural production had to be adjusted at a level that would not result in a rise in consumer retail spending above the rate paid to farmers during the prewar base period.
• Many were surprised by the contrast between the enormous agricultural surpluses, the numerous deaths brought on by a lack of food, and various administrative actions taken by the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
• Because feed prices were rising and many could not afford to feed their animals, there were many humans and cattle by the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Along with giving pigs to the Red Cross, “plowing under” pigs was supposed to keep them from maturing into breeding animals.

Tenant Farming

• The South’s post-Civil War cotton and tobacco industries were defined by tenant farming. It seriously harmed all farmers as the agricultural sector collapsed in the early 1930s, but tenant farmers and sharecroppers suffered the most.
• The Act curtailed agricultural output to achieve parity, raising food prices to levels they had reached in the prosperous years of 1909–1914. The Act did this by providing acreage reduction contracts to landowners, under which they committed not to grow cotton on a specific amount of their property.
• Few individuals are gullible enough to think that a reduction in cotton production by one-third without a corresponding decrease in labor is possible.
• Following the Act’s implementation, statistics showed “a persistent and general trend for cotton croppers and, to a significant extent, renters to fall in number between 1930 and 1935,” according to researchers.
• Generally speaking, African-Americans saw a more significant drop than those whites. The previously high levels of year-to-year migration were significantly reduced as tenants and croppers preferred to stay longer with the same landowner.
• However, many landlords were worried that assistance provided directly to tenant farmers would have a “demoralizing effect,” according to researcher Harold C. Hoffsommer.
• The Act had drawbacks, even if it mimicked American agriculture. For instance, it disproportionately helped central farmers and food processors, while small farmers and sharecroppers received less profit. Small farmers and croppers fled to the cities when cotton packaging machines increased after 1945.

Thomas Amendment

• The Thomas Amendment, which was included as Title III to the Act, served as the “third horse” in the New Deal’s farm relief legislation. Elmer Thomas, a senator from Oklahoma, proposed the amendment, which combined New Economic theories with populist beliefs in favor of free money. Thomas desired a stable “honest dollar” that would be equitable to creditors and debtors.
• The amendment said that the Government Open Market Committee would be permitted to acquire up to $3 billion in federal liabilities by the Federal Reserve anytime the president wished to expand the currency.
• He may have the USA. To settle World War I obligations owed by European countries, the Treasury may issue up to $3 billion in dollars, lower the dollar’s gold content by up to 50%, or take $100 million in silver at a price not to exceed 50 cents per ounce.
• Use The Thomas Amendment sparingly. Roosevelt confirmed the London Agreement on Silver on December 21, 1933, and the government received small amounts of silver in payment for military bills from World War I. (adopted at the World Economic and Monetary Conference in London on July 20, 1933.)
• However, wholesale costs kept going up. The Thomas Amendment may have resulted in the most significant increase in governmental control over monetary policy.
• This change decreased the amount of silver owned by private individuals (perhaps as a safeguard against inflation or the financial system’s collapse) and increased the amount of money in circulation.

Ruled Unconstitutional

• On January 6, 1936, the Supreme Court declared in United States v. Butler that the Act was unconstitutional because it imposed this tax on the processors but returned it to the farmers.
• Agriculture regulation was seen as a state power. As a result, due to a lack of authority, the federal government could not compel states to implement the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The agricultural program, however, persisted after the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 fixed these technical problems.

Ware Group

• Harold Ware, John Abt, Lee Pressman, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Nathan Witt, Henry Collins, Marion Bacharach (whose husband Howard Bacharach was also a AAA employee), John Herrmann, and Nathaniel Weyl was also alleged members of the Ware Group, according to Whittaker Chambers’ subpoenaed testimony to HUAC on August 3, 1948.

Declining Crop Prices

• The Great Depression particularly heavily impacted Georgia, but economic problems existed well before the 1929 stock market crash. Throughout the 1920s, several states saw a boom in industry and output thanks to a rise in consumer products and easier access to financing.
• Cotton’s nationwide price dropped from 28.8 cents to 17.98 cents between 1918 and 1928. At 5.66 cents, cotton’s price peaked in 1931. Finally, the need for cotton declined due to new designs like flapper dresses and synthetic materials like rayon. Many small-scale family farmers moved to urban areas.
• Georgia faced economic difficulties in addition to having unhealthy soil. Due to the state’s long-standing reliance on cash-crop agriculture, farmers were urged to plant cotton on every available acre, which eventually depleted the ground and caused erosion.

Results of the AAA

• During his first 100 days in office, Roosevelt recommended the AAA because he was aware of Georgia’s economic situation due to his frequent Warm Springs trips. The senators and representatives from Georgia voted in favor of the legislation approved by both houses of Congress in 1933.
• Taxes on the businesses that processed the crops were used to fund the subsidies. With a focus on maize, cotton, milk, peanuts, rice, tobacco, and wheat, the government sought to improve crop prices and keep farmers afloat by limiting their supply.
• The farmers of Georgia were not all given an equal share of these earnings. Sharecroppers, common in Georgia, were not given subsidies; instead, they were given to landowners. The sharecroppers lost their jobs when the landowners left their fields fallow.
• Some landowners bought productive new farming equipment with the help of subsidies. Because one tractor, for example, could perform the duties of several people, even more sharecroppers were made unemployed.
• Crop insurance and subsidies are still in use in the twenty-first century. 2012 saw the U.S. and the Department of Agriculture insure farmers against crop or income loss at the cost of more than $14 billion.
• 2.86 million acres of farmland in Georgia were covered by insurance in 2014. By area, cotton, peanuts, and soybeans are the most insured crops in the state. In 2014, more than 95% of Georgia’s cotton, peanut, and tobacco acres were covered by insurance.

Agricultural Adjustment Act Worksheets

This bundle contains 11 ready-to-use Agricultural Adjustment Act Worksheets that are perfect for students who want to learn more about the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which was part of the New Deal program under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The act was enacted on May 12, 1933, and aimed to boost agricultural production in the United States.

Download includes the following worksheets:

• Agricultural Adjustment Act Facts
• Agricultural Adjustment Act Word Search
• Is It True?
• Agricultural Adjustment Act Goals
• Cartoon Analysis
• AAA: Benefits: Bulletin Board
• What If?
• Proposing Amendments
• In My Opinion…
• Agriculture: Its Significance
• Agricultural Adjustment Act Acrostic

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Agricultural Adjustment Act?

Federal legislation known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was enacted in 1933 as a part of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The law gave farmers incentives to reduce the number of crops they produced. To reduce overproduction and raise agricultural prices, they established incentives.

What is Thomas Amendment?

The Thomas Amendment, which was included as Title III to the Act, served as the “third horse” in the New Deal’s farm relief legislation. Elmer Thomas, a senator from Oklahoma, proposed the amendment, which combined New Economic theories with populist beliefs in favor of free money. Thomas desired a stable “honest dollar” that would be equitable to creditors and debtors.

What is the goal of the Agricultural Adjustment Act?

The Agricultural Adjustment Act used various techniques to restore farm buying power of agricultural commodities or the fair exchange value of a product based on price compared to the prewar 1909–14 level.

Who is the president of the United States that let the country through the worst of the Great Depression?

When he took office in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States led the country through the worst of the Great Depression. “Farmers faced the most difficult economic climate and the lowest crop prices” since the 1890s.

What is the result of AAA?

The farmers of Georgia were not all given an equal share of these earnings. Sharecroppers, common in Georgia, were not given subsidies; instead, they were given to landowners. The sharecroppers lost their jobs when the landowners left their fields fallow.

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Link will appear as Agricultural Adjustment Act Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, June 7, 2017