Anne Effland
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
and that is production increases around World War I. Farmers expanded their production to meet wartime goals, and there were some price supports during that time that provided incentives for increased, especially wheat and pork and some of these other staple commodities.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
But there was no real planning for the aftermath after the increased demand and the price supports that are set up for war go away. And it left a number of farmers who had, in good faith, developed larger farms and more productive farms with very low prices.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
That's when we see the beginning of real price policies for agriculture.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
There was an idea of something called parity, which was that the price should be such that it would give farmers the same purchasing power in comparison to workers and others in the economy that they had had before World War I. And that was the guideline for what those price support levels ought to be.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
These things all take place in the context of their own times. Having policies that found a way to increase farm incomes in the 1930s, I think, would be seen as a good thing. But there are also consequences of that over time as they get embedded.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
So we have controls on how much can you plant on an acre, but not on how much your yield is on the acres you are planting. There's a huge boom, lots of new chemicals, fertilizers, machinery that make farms more productive. So even though we're trying to control by reducing the acreage, there continues to be increasing production and surpluses don't go down.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
Problem solving on the scientific and technical and engineering side tends to run on its own track and be seen as a positive outcome. I don't think there's ever a point at which the policy side is saying, oh, stop providing good science and better agricultural practices so we don't have these surpluses. Because when you do that, what you're saying is then...
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
stop this economic development, solving problems and making farming more efficient are still seen as good projects to continue. The fact that they also create these surpluses is sort of a different track of problems that the farm policy then is trying to figure out solutions to.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
The U.S. becomes a majority urban nation by, I think, 1920. And there's a lot of anxiety among leaders, political leaders, thought leaders, about whether or not U.S. agriculture is going to be productive enough to feed this growing urban population.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
You know, a lot of the seed development and livestock breeding. One good example would be the research done in the 1890s on animal disease, on bovine tuberculosis, for example. to identify the causes of those diseases and then to develop ways to treat that. There was also research on developing new kinds of machinery that would be less heavy on the ground or less damaging to crops.
Freakonomics Radio
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Update)
There was a need for better transportation from the farms to the cities. So USDA had a unit that did engineering research on the best road materials and road construction methods. The Rural Electrification Administration was part of the New Deal USDA. The private electrical companies didn't see a profit in expanding out into rural areas, and so that was taken on by USDA.