The Industrial Outlook for Agriculture

Excerpt: We are at present greatly interested in the short-time outlook for agriculture. The war in Europe has become the outstanding feature in prospects for agricultural prices and income for 1940. There is considerable danger that our concern with the various potentialities in the war situation and the many possible impacts on both industry and agriculture may lead us to pay too little attention to the long-time feature in agricultural prospects. One of these features is shortage of industrial opportunities for submarginal and surplus farm population, and it is that feature and some of its implications that want to talk about. Perhaps we can divide the problem into three connected parts without drawing any exact lines of demarcation. One part concerns the problem of urban unemployment, which can be relieved only in part by relief expenditures and relief work. It is necessary ultimately to have job-creating expenditures either by private capital or by public agencies or by both of these sources together. The second part of the difficulty affects what we might term the permanent farm population--in other words, the 80 percent of the existing farm population that can produce what the market requires of foods and fibers. Measures for increasing the income of this group include crop adjustment and price, and income payments under various federal laws. The third part of the general problem is the surplus farm population, with which group we should perhaps associate a hybrid group that is neither permanently industrial nor permanently agricultural. For these people likewise we need job-creating programs.