[…] The… oil-fueled boom that energized the suburban expansion of the 1920s brought turmoil and trouble to the farm economy. Thirty percent of the U.S. population still lived on farms in the 1920s. U.S. farmers had done well during World War I, exporting grain to a Europe that had become a shell-blasted battlefield. By the early 1920s, though, Europeans were able to feed themselves again. Meanwhile, the introduction of the tractor and the mechanization of farming in the United States led quickly to [the] massive overproduction of grain. Unable any longer to pawn off the surplus on Europe, America suffered a crash in grain prices. The farm depression, which preceded the financial depression by half a decade, was a self-reinforcing feedback loop. As the market prices of corn and wheat plunged, farmers desperately tried to make up for low prices by producing more, which the domestic markets could not absorb, leading to even greater surpluses and more depressed prices.

Well, of course, the '78 crops haven't been planted, except for winter wheat. You know, I'm a farmer, and Senator Talmadge is a farmer. Bob Bergland is a farmer. We have a genuine problem. I would say that in the last 5 years that the cost of producing most crops has increased a hundred percent, certainly as far as equipment prices, energy prices, fertilizer prices is concerned. At the same time, most commodity prices have increased very little, if at all. The debt that farmers now hold has increased rapidly. The amount of reserve finances in country banks is down below the historical averages. We do have a good bit of flexibility within the 1977 agricultural act that the Congress passed and I approved last year. We have large reserve supplies of feed grains, food grains carried over. There's no way to predict what the weather will be this year. We've already initiated a moderate set-aside program at some substantial cost to the Government. And we have about 6 or 7 billion dollars in increased payments authorized to the farmers, because of higher target prices and support prices. What else needs to be done at this point I haven't decided. The impact of the new farm legislation has not yet been felt on the agricultural community of our country. It only went into effect the first day of October, and of course, it hadn't gone through a crop season yet. I think there will be some benefit at least from that. I don't see any possibility of lower prices for fuel, nor for fertilizer. I think that there's going to have to be a sober assessment by the farmers themselves of economic circumstances now and in the future. I live and have always lived among and with farmers. My people have been in-my Carter family has been here over 300 years—we've all been farmers, every generation of us. And it's a characteristic of many farmers to spend this year what you made last year. And I think there's been an inclination with the limited acreage to have a heavier and heavier investment in equipment that's very costly. At the same time, of course, yields have gone up. In the long run, the food and feed demands with a fixed or dwindling acreage supply will correct the problem. But at the present time, we have an excess surplus on hand, and as you've shifted from the smaller tractors and livestock cultivation to the very large tractors, you've cut out the windrows and, in effect, you've gone to a fence-to-fence operation. This has amounted to about, I think, a 50-million acre increase in the land being cultivated. So, with our present set-aside program and the present farm program, we have a step in the right direction. And we will assess other factors, the carryover crops, prospective worldwide production for this 1978 year, the lending capability of farm banks, the amount of debt carried over—we'll analyze all those factors and decide whether to use the flexibility in the present law or to ask for additional legislation. We have not yet decided.

The above results are obtained with the help of warm frames, thousands of glass bells, and so on. But even without such costly things, with only 36 yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables are grown in the open air to the value of £200 per acre. ...[I]n such cases the high selling prices of crops are not due to the high prices fetched by early vegetables in winter; they are entirely due to the high crops of the plainest ones.

A decrease in the world supply of wheat has resulted in a very large increase in the price of that commodity. The position of all agricultural products indicates a better balanced supply, but we can not yet conclude that agriculture is recovered from the effects of the war period or that it is permanently on a prosperous basis. The cattle industry has not yet recovered and in some sections has been suffering from dry weather. Every effort must be made both by Government activity and by private agencies to restore and maintain agriculture to a complete normal relationship with other industries.

[Everything, and not just] all human enterprise can tend toward diminishing returns and unsustainability, but some modes have far more long-term prospects than others and some are socially suicidal, even in the short term. Many civilizations, from the Sumerians to the Maya, have faltered when overinvestments in the scale and complexity of food production produced ruinous diminishing returns. On American farms in the early 1800s, the balance between calories expended and calories produced as [the] food was about even. This occurred as tools reached a high stage of refinement but before machines replaced human labor and traditional knowledge. It implies a distinction between tools and machines, between work done with tools and work done by machines. Production improved while entropy was kept to a minimum. Under the current industrial farming system, it takes sixteen calories of “input” to produce one calorie of grain, and seventy calories of input to produce one calorie of meat. A hundred years ago, just before the introduction of… fossil fuel-based technologies, more than 30 percent of the American population was engaged in farming. Now the figure is 1.6 percent. The issue is not moral, academic, or aesthetic. […] It’s a matter of those ratios being made possible only because cheap oil and automation made up for so much human labor. We did what we did in the twentieth century because we could. Of course, not all farm labor amounts to slavery or serfdom. Depending on how farming is organized, it can result in a very satisfactory way of life and rewarding social relations. Agriculture in the United States was organized very differently in Pennsylvania and South Carolina 150 years ago, and not simply because of climatic differences.
Farmers had quickly become addicted to a new debt system of annual operation, mortgaging their farms to raise cash to pay for new machinery and fertilizer—literally betting the farm on a good crop. With prices chronically depressed, mortgages could not be paid off. Farm foreclosures soared in the mid-1920s. Another unanticipated consequence of mechanized farming was the destruction of [the] soil. The tractor and its implements were machines that no one had previously experienced before, and it was some time before farmers noticed the insidious effects of soil compaction, rutting, and erosion that occurred. This would combine a few years later with an extended drought to produce the additional hardship of the .

If there is a crop failure, surpluses cannot be collected because there will be none. They would have to be taken out of the peasants' mouths. If there is a crop, everybody will go moderately hungry and the state will be saved, or it will perish, unless we take from people who do not eat their fill as it is. This is what we must make clear in our propaganda among the peasants. A fair harvest will mean a surplus of up to five million poods. This will cover consumption and yield a certain reserve. The important thing is to give the peasants an economic incentive.

Twenty years after the Corn Laws were abolished in this country we produced twice as much wheat as we imported... Since then four or five million acres of arable land have become pasture, and about half the agricultural population—the agricultural labouring population—has emigrated to the Colonies. No doubt the State showed a lamentable indifference to the importance of the agricultural industry and to the very life of the nation, and that is a mistake which must never be repeated. No civilised country in the world spent less on agriculture, or even spent so little on agriculture, either directly or indirectly, as we did.

The Englishman, in eleven years, gets three bushels more of wheat than the Frenchman. He gets three crops of barley, tares, or beans, which produce nearly twice as many bushels per acre, as what the three French crops of spring corn produce. And he farther gets, at the same time, three crops of turnips and two of clover, the turnips worth 40s. the acre, and the clover 60s. that is 12l. for both. What an enormous superiority! More wheat; almost double of the spring corn; and above 20s. per acre per annum in turnips and clover. But farther; the Englishman's land, by means of the manure arising from the consumption of the turnips and clover is in a constant state of improvement, while the Frenchman's farm is stationary.

I began planting in October of last year, and planted something almost continuously up to the middle of April. I had a yield of about 200 bushels of Irish potatoes per acre from planting, and sold them on the ground at four to five cents per pound, amounting to $2.50 per bushel. I grew all kinds of vegetables, including strawberries, watermelon, muskmelon, etc. I also grew sorghum cane, kaffa corn and broom corn. I also planted a grapefruit grove and a pineapple garden and they are doing fine. … West McKinley is rapidly building up and the land in West McKinley is the best I have seen on the island. Mrs. Lattin and my family enjoy life in West McKinley very much. In fact, Mrs. Lattin did not care to come North on a visit, stating that she enjoys the summer climate there as well as the winter. In fact, nothing could induce us to move back to the States. The island undoubtedly has a great future.

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field such as one of these, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labor per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.

But in the end, if everything goes to plan, I’ll have 92 square meters of crop-able soil. Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers!

There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.

In 1800, a prosperous year, the total income of Americans (called ‘the national income’) was something over 2 billion dollars, a fabulous amount then. Capitalists and landlords got 68%, farmers and laborers 32%. In 1930, of tragic memory, near the bottom of ‘the worst depression in history’, the incomes of all Americans amounted to roughly to 75 billion. Of this wage earners (who had increased in number 17%) got 64%+; entrepreneurs, 20%; capitalists and landlords the remaining 16%.

In the late 1980s, Soviets were allowed to keep the wealth they created by raising vegetables on their garden plots. Although these plots composed only about 2% of the agricultural lands in the Soviet Union, they produced 25% of the food! When Soviets kept the wealth they created, they produced almost 16 times more than when it was taken from them at gunpoint, if necessary!