Position:Home>History> During the Great Depression, why were people destroying food when so many people

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“For example, the federal government bought 6 million hogs in 1933 alone and destroyed them!. Huge amounts of farm produce were plowed under, in order to keep it off the market and maintain prices at the officially fixed level, and vast amounts of milk were poured down the sewers for the same reason!.”

With the depression prices for products were dropping below cost of production and this program of the government was an attempt to hold the prices up by reducing the amount of product available!. The idea being that when there is less product and increasing demand prices increase!.

To some extent this program was followed by farming organizations doing the same thing!. Here however, this was ‘also’ driven by frustration!. That is, producing product that was actually needed (demonstrated by increasing demand) but prices continued to fall, creating a situation where producers were providing the product, selling it, and still going broke!.

Going broke for the farmers could be seen by the increasing number of foreclosures on farming operations!. It should be kept in mind that in those times there was a far higher percentage of farms (nearly all) that were ‘family farms so it was not just a business failure but a family failure!.

So, we had a situation where people were lacking in a land of plenty!.

This situation occur to a large extent (as it is today) due to ill conceived government intervention in the private sector!. History demonstrates that no matter the (assumed) good intentions, such government intervention never works!.

To a significant extent 'splat' is correct!. A debased monetary supply destroys the economic free market and the capability of the markets to correct themselves!.

All markets go through cycles of ups and downs as normal adjustments, however, when there are acts which artificially keep a market up and do not allow normal adjusting down cycles to occur, when the down cycle adjustment does occur (and it will) it will be a deeper drop and a longer period of adjustment!.

This occurred leading up to and during the Depression of the 1930s and it is happening now!. As happened during the Roosevelt Administration the government is taking large steps to force government mandated adjustments and all that did during the 1930s (and it will do the same thing now) is to extend the down period!. The Depression era ended because our economy went to war as the only viable production environment to support the Allies in the efforts of World War II!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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A lot of people are confused about what the great depression was!.
It was no a failure of crops or anything like that!.
Ot was a failure of the money supply!.
People had no way to trade!.
Fishermen had oceans full of fish that they could not sell to farmers who had fields of wheat thy could not sell!.
The fish stayed in the ocean and the wheat lay rotting in piles on the prairies!. The fishermen starved for far produce and the farmers starved for fish product!.

The whole economy was like that!.
Stores full of unsold boots because nobody had any money to buy them with, and went barefoot instead!.

If you believe economics the price should be set by competition, but how does that work when your markets need money to operate and nobody has any!.
If the east coaster could have reached the farmer maybe they could have traded fish for produce, but they were to far away and that leaves everybody else out of the loop!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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