Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century (American Ways)

Great scientific and technological advances in the twentieth century enabled American farmers to produce bountiful harvests that ensured an abundant and relatively cheap food supply. But as farmers became more productive, surplus agricultural commodities, such as grain, milk, and cotton, drove prices down. With few exceptions, farmers found it difficult to earn an adequate standard of living. These are the fundamental developments that Douglas Hurt traces in Problems of Plenty, a compact narrative history of American agriculture over the last century. Mr. Hurt shows how farm men and women increasingly looked to the federal government―for technical information to help them become more productive and more profitable; for regulation of business practices to guarantee them equitable treatment in the marketplace; for intervention in the agricultural economy to support prices and protect their income. The course of farm policy is a basic theme in Mr. Hurt's book. He surveys the major policy changes that helped shape farming both as a business and as a way of life. Perhaps inevitably, as he points out, farmers came to depend on the federal government for a wide variety of programs they eventually regarded as entitlements. But in return the farmers lost freedom of action, because the cost of participating in federal programs was compliance with a myriad of regulations that made the government an integral part of American agriculture. As the twentieth century ended, farmers remained divided over government's role in their lives, just as they had been for most of the century.