Problems of Farmers

Gabriella Mercogliano
1 May 2014
6TH period APUSH
Problems of Farmers (9)

  1. In the colonial era farming was a main form of living, pre-industrialization, raw goods could be derived in the form of tobacco, cotton, etc. These items where then shipped across the water where the raw goods where turned into sellable items. The Columbian exchange made it so that world competition wasn’t present because the New World made markets for food never seen before. In comparison is after industrialization textiles could be made on the home front and the raw material was right at the hands of Americans as well increasing their ability to compete in a global market.
  2. During the 1920’s due to isolationism and the closing of American ports to world trade, there became an excess of supply without enough demand. Compared with the state of America and the rest of the world during the Great Depression, there was too much demand and not enough ability to supply.
  3. The problems of farmers during Bacon’s Rebellion was due to indentured servants not being able to provide for themselves as they were given little to nothing in return for their years of unpaid work. This is similar to the problems of freedmen after the abolition of slavery. Freedmen faced little to no money when they were freed and therefore in the Black belt ended up most of the time sharecropping the land of their former “masters”.
  4. In the colonial era, farming and self-sufficiency was the main way of providing for a family and/or a town. This ideology however was specific to the model of America most closely related to pre-industry and pre-urbanization. When industry struck America during the Industrial Revolution, a mass amount of people slowly migrated to more urban places leaving the grass roots of their home behind. The percentile of farms and farmers shrunk considerably which is why in 1891 the Populist Party was formed in a dying attempt to achieve a decrease in railroads and monopolies and a raise of those practicing agrarian lifestyles.
  5. Before the depression during the 1920’s, due to American isolationism farmers created a mass amount of food with too much supply and not enough demand. In order to deal with this problem FDR issued the policy that farmers where required to destroy an excess amount of food that was over a certain quota. This policy seemed almost ridiculous as there was good food going to waste but it was an attempt to rebalance the inflation that farmers where experiencing. Farmers changed over time as their food became a part oflarger industry, the government.