AAA - Agricultural Adjustment Administration

The AAA gave help to the nation's farmers

   The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was a New Deal program designed to help farmers.

   The problem for farmers was that they were producing more than what consumers could buy. As a result, the price they got for their crops was falling lower and lower. Farmers' income was actually falling.

   This problem is called overproduction, and the AAA was created to help solve it.

The AAA developed a plan to pay farmers to leave some of their land
unplanted. That way, the total crop would be lower, and more in
balance with the needs of the nation's consumers.

The photo below shows an AAA farming expert studying photographs
of farmland to determine how much land should be taken out of production.

The photo below shows farmers in Texas at a government office
collecting their payment for leaving some of their land unplanted.
The plan did help bring the price of many crops back to a
level that gave farmers a reasonable profit.

What happened to the AAA?

The law that created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, created in 1933,
was changed in 1938. Today there are a large number of laws and government
programs that try to help farmers in various ways.

What category did the AAA of the 1930s fit in, in the chart below?

All photos are from the Library of Congress.
Some have been edited or resized for this page.

Copyright 2009, 2016 by David Burns. All rights reserved. As a guide to the Virginia Standards of Learning, some pages necessarily include phrases or sentences from that document, which is available online from the Virginia Department of Education. The author's copyright extends to the original text and graphics, unique design and layout, and related material.