Archive Report
Archive Report
Agricultural Distress and Proposed Relief Measures
Summary
The long continued depression in American agriculture can be directly traced to the stimulus to production given by high prices during and immediately following the war, and the failure of American farmers generally during the last four years to limit surplus production of agricultural staples to reduced export demand.
The prices of agricultural staples, such as wheat and pork products, of which large surpluses are produced in the United States, are fixed in world markets. The large American surpluses produced in post-war years, coming into competition in European markets, where buying power has been seriously reduced, with accumulated low-cost surpluses forwarded by countries cut off from those markets during the war, caused disastrous declines in prices, from which there has ...