How did the Great Depression affect American farmers?

How did the Great Depression affect American farmers?

Farmers who had borrowed money to expand during the boom couldn’t pay their debts. As farms became less valuable, land prices fell, too, and farms were often worth less than their owners owed to the bank. Farmers across the country lost their farms as banks foreclosed on mortgages. Farming communities suffered, too.

How did the Great Depression affect farmers quizlet?

Farmers had planted more and taken out loans for land and equipment. Demand fell after the war, and crop prices declined by 40 percent or more. Farmers boosted production in the hopes of selling more crops, but this only depressed prices further.

How did the Great Depression affect animals?

Livestock on America’s Farms during the 1930s Depression. On Nebraska’s small farms in the 1930s, nearly all families raised several kinds of animals. Horses and mules pulled farm equipment in the fields. Farmers raised hogs and cattle to sell for money and butchered a few animals to feed their families.

How did the Agricultural Adjustment Act help farmers?

In 1933, the United States Congress approved and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act helped farmers by increasing the value of their crops and livestock, helping agriculturalists to reap higher prices when they sold their products.

Where did the farmers go during the Great Depression?

In the 1930s, farmers from the Midwestern Dust Bowl states, especially Oklahoma and Arkansas, began to move to California; 250,000 arrived by 1940, including a third who moved into the San Joaquin Valley, which had a 1930 population of 540,000. During the 1930s, some 2.5 million people left the Plains states.

How did Depression era crop and livestock prices affect farmers?

Farmers Grow Angry and Desperate. During World War I, farmers worked hard to produce record crops and livestock. When prices fell they tried to produce even more to pay their debts, taxes and living expenses. In the early 1930s prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms.

What was life like for farmers during the Great Depression?

Daily life on the farm during the Great Depression was a tough life full of hard work and few luxuries. Many farmers had been having a tough time since before the Depression due to overproduction and plunging prices. Farmers in the Midwest had it especially difficult when years of drought and dust storms hit them during the Depression.

What was farming like in the 1920s?

Family life on a farm in York County was very different from life in town in the 1920s. On the farm, there was no electricity or indoor plumbing. Farming was hard work, with long days and little money. Work and play revolved around the seasons.

What were migrant farmers in the 1930s?

1930s: The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (a period of drought that destroyed millions of acres of farmland) forced white farmers to sell their farms and become migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages.