The Dust Bowl And New Deal Programs

The Great Depression took its tolls on farmers, who like many other Americans, had borrowed heavily and made decisions based on speculation and a false sense of prosperity.

When banks failed during the Great Depression, this took an additional toll on farmers, many of whom lost their life savings and the money they needed to invest in future crops.

In the early 1930s, the plight of American farmers became more dire when drought conditions and over-farming led to the ruination of their land. Farmers in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas were hardest hit by prolonged windstorms that created “black blizzards” and eventually turned more than 100 million acres of farmland into a Dust Bowl.

Following are some of the New Deal programs that were introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to support farming and to provide jobs for out-of-work farmers:
•Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA)
•Civilian Conservation Corps Act of 1933 (CCC)
•Farm Security Administration Act of 1935 (FSA)
•Soil  Conservation Service Act of 1935 (SCS)
•Farm Security Administration Act of 1937 (FSA)
•Rural Electrification Administration (REA)