The Farm Security Administration was a New Deal agency that aimed to support poor and rural farmers during the Great Depression. Initially focused on relocating farmers to large government-owned farms, it later shifted to providing low-interest loans for smallholder farmers to buy their own land. The agency’s intelligence division also sent photographers to document the struggles of farmers, resulting in famous images that have come to represent the hardships of the era.
The Farm Security Administration was a Depression-era agency in the United States that provided a variety of support programs to poor and rural farmers. The agency was initially known as the Resettlement Administration because of its primary function of moving farm families from unproductive and unprofitable small farms and resettling them into similar farm family communities working on large tracts of land owned by the government. The resettlement mission was abandoned in the late 1930s due to political opposition, but the agency has survived to this day with other duties such as Farmers Home Administration.
During the Great Depression, many tenant farmers and sharecroppers could not produce enough crops to sell at market value and support their livelihoods. Too many farmers were chasing too few buyers for their crops. The Dust Bowl has also contributed to this, as both a long drought and soil erosion resulting from poor farming techniques have reduced agricultural productivity. To combat both problems, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government wanted to educate small farmers in modern farming techniques and reduce the overall number of farmers in the nation.
The federal government formed the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal. That same year, the Resettlement Administration was renamed the Farm Security Administration. The first task of the Farm Security Administration, or FSA, involved creating large government-owned farms by buying up the small parcels of struggling farmers who had productive land but could not make a living. The FSA relocated displaced farm families, and families moved from unproductive farms to fields near large tracts. There they received instruction in modern agricultural techniques and were paid to work government land.
A growing number of conservative members of Congress opposed what they believed was the Farm Security Administration’s Soviet-style collectivization of agriculture. At the same time, displaced farmers claimed the right to buy small farms of their own and asked for government assistance. As a result, the FSA’s mission shifted to providing low-interest loans that would enable smallholder farmers to buy their own parcels of land.
One lasting impact of the Farm Security Administration was a program implemented by its intelligence division to send photographers into U.S. farm country to put a human face on the plight of farmers for the rest of the country. Many of these photographers would become famous artists. Their heartbreaking images of struggling farmers and their families, which can be found online at the Library of Congress digital library, have come to mean the hardships brought on by the Depression for many.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
