The Depression Dilemmas of Rural Iowa, 1929-1933

Epilogue: “Too Much” and “Too Little” : Rural Iowa after 1933

181 “witness my home, iowa, the most ecologically altered state in the union.” —David s. faldet, Oneota Flow (2009) “it was the 1980s farm crisis in iowa and people were disappearing.” —John t. price, Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships [A Memoir] (2008) airy families lived in this neighborhood thirty years ago,” explains David faldet about the long-term consequences of new Deal government policies on iowa’s farmers, “but the pattern and use has changed. the steady money, from the markets and subsidies of the farm security agency, is no longer in small dairy operations.” explaining the irony of that government agency’s title, faldet continues: “the money has gone to row crops and the hogs that consume a steady diet of subsidized grain from infancy to slaughter.” He further details the long-term consequences of such a government policy in that a contemporary farmer along the upper iowa river with “steeper fields shifted to corn and beans” now harvests 4.5 tons of corn per acre of tilled soil each year, but the loss of topsoil from that intense harvest can be almost ten times that amount in a single growing season. “the formula,” as faldet concludes, “does not allow for a long future of farming.”1 Despite its acreage limitations, the new Deal’s agricultural adjustment administration ultimately encouraged an industrial approach to agriculture with its emphasis on row crops and specialized livestock. to possibly manage agricultural market prices, the federal government directed and E P I L O G U E “too much” and “too little” Rural Iowa after 1933 D the depression dilemmas of rural Iowa, 1929–1933 182 limited specific crop acreages and livestock production, but yields still increased because of the newly developing hybrid corn along with scientific animal husbandry. still, market prices never rose significantly because american farms continued to overproduce, and thus the financial independence of the family farm subsequently eroded. in september 1939 with europe’s sudden emergence into the second world war, iowa’s farmers found themselves at the forefront of “food for freedom,” a national campaign creating the “farm front” by encouraging all-out production with specific crop and livestock specialization along with increased mechanization. Dramatic, short-term profit resulted from the urgent, global need to feed the united states military and allies. the second world war changed american agriculture in many dramatic and probably permanent ways. Concepts of diversification and conservation, which had created progressive ideals such as alternative crops and contour plowing during the Depression era, would be shoved aside as almost treasonous in this escalating world war against the axis enemies. severe wartime shortages of farm labor pushed many family farmers out of business if they could not keep pace with the all-out production model and its corresponding requirements . tractors had become tanks on this farm front, and even growing soybeans could now be an act of military revenge for pearl Harbor. Corn in particular became the wartime ammunition. the all-out production model during the second world war and into the postwar era developed rapidly and expanded geometrically. By the 1970s, as iowa farmer Bruce Carlson explains iowans’ new approach to the land, only a few farmers had “followed their instincts and never left crop rotations, wind breaks, and the many practices that farming fence-to-fence with lots of chemicals and big equipment seemed to make passe.” Carlson also questions the turmoil of the state’s later farming generations: “we speak of tolerable soil loss. why do we farm on a limited and depletable medium and speak of its demise as tolerable?”2 “traction engine” was a gas-powered tractor during the great war. “a heavy, expensive, and not very maneuverable machine,” explains iowa historian David faldet. “By the thirties it became useful, reliable, and affordable. By the end of world war ii there was one tractor for approximately every two hundred acres of iowa farmland. tractors did not need oats or hay, never got tired, and could provide power for speeded-up machinery.” faldet concludes with a litany of rural iowa’s changes: “Horses would disappear, hired men and women became less necessary, and children were less essential as extra hands. farm size had grown in the sell-off period of the Depression, and new cash demands for machin- epilogue 183 ery and fuel pushed farmers to increase their acreage they farmed to meet their expenses.”3 and...