FDR Fire Side ChatsOn Legislation to be Recommended to the Extraordinary Session of the Congress - Tuesday, October 12, 1937 - a podcast by Humphrey Camardella Productions

"The overwhelming majority of our citizens who live by agriculture
are thinking (very) clearly how they want Government to help them
in connection with the production of crops. They want Government help
in two ways -- first, in the control of surpluses, and, second, in
the proper use of land.

The other day a reporter told me that he had never been able to
understand why the Government seeks to curtail crop production and,
at the same time, to open up new irrigated acres.

He was confusing two totally separate objectives.

Crop surplus control relates to the total amount of any major crop
grown in the whole nation on all cultivated land, (good or bad) good
land or poor land -- control by the cooperation of the crop growers
and with the help of the Government. Land use (on the other hand)
is a policy of providing each farmer with the best quality and type
of land we have, or can make available, for his part in that total
production. Adding good new land for diversified crops is offset by
abandoning poor land now uneconomically farmed.

The total amount of production largely determines the price of the
crop, and, therefore, the difference between comfort and misery for
the farmer.

Let me give you an example: If we Americans were foolish enough
to run every shoe factory twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,
we would soon have more shoes than the Nation could possibly buy --
a surplus of shoes so great that it would have to be destroyed, or
given away, or sold at prices far below the cost of production. That
simple (law) illustration, that simple law of supply and demand equally
affects the price of all our major crops."

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