Breadlines knee deep in wheat : food assistance in the great depression / Janet Poppendieck ; foreword by Marion Nestle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Poppendieck, Janet, 1945- author.

Nestle, Marion, author of introduction, etc.

Series:

California Studies in Food and Culture ; 53

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food relief--United States--History.

Food relief.

Depressions--1929--United States.

Depressions.

Agriculture and state--United States--History.

Agriculture and state.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (401 p.)

Edition:

Updated and expanded edition.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley ; Los Angeles, California : University of California Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

At no time during the Great Depression was the contradiction between agriculture surplus and widespread hunger more wrenchingly graphic than in the government's attempt to raise pork prices through the mass slaughter of miliions of "unripe" little pigs. This contradiction was widely perceived as a "paradox." In fact, as Janet Poppendieck makes clear in this newly expanded and updated volume, it was a normal, predictable working of an economic system rendered extreme by the Depression. The notion of paradox, however, captured the imagination of the public and policy makers, and it was to this definition of the problem that surplus commodities distribution programs in the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations were addressed. This book explains in readable narrative how the New Deal food assistance effort, originally conceived as a relief measure for poor people, became a program designed to raise the incomes of commercial farmers. In a broader sense, the book explains how the New Deal years were formative for food assistance in subsequent administrations; it also examines the performance--or lack of performance--of subsequent in-kind relief programs. Beginning with a brief survey of the history of the American farmer before the depression and the impact of the Depression on farmers, the author describes the development of Hoover assistance programs and the events at the end of that administration that shaped the "historical moment" seized by the early New Deal. Poppendieck goes on to analyze the food assistance policies and programs of the Roosevelt years, the particular series of events that culminated in the decision to purchase surplus agriculture products and distribute them to the poor, the institutionalization of this approach, the resutls achieved, and the interest groups formed. The book also looks at the takeover of food assistance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its gradual adaptation for use as a tool in the maintenance of farm income. Utliizing a wide variety of official and unofficial sources, the author reveals with unusual clarity the evolution from a policy directly responsive to the poor to a policy serving mainly democratic needs.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Paradox of Want amid Plenty

List of Abbreviations

One. The Plight of the Farmer

Two. Depression: Deprivation and Despair

Three. The Politics of Wheat and Drought

Four. Government Grain for the Needy

Five. The End of the Hoover Era

Six. The Promise of the New Deal

Seven. The Little Pigs: The Genesis of Relief Distribution

Eight. The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation

Nine. The Corporation in Conflict: Competition with Private Enterprise

Ten. Transfer to the Department of Agriculture

Eleven. Accommodation to Agricultural Priorities

Twelve. Food Assistance: The Legacy of New Deal Policy Choices

Epilogue

Acknowledgments to the 2014 Edition

Sources

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed May 31, 2014).

ISBN:

9780520277540

0520277546

9780520958425

052095842X

OCLC:

879946702