FDR Fire Side ChatsOn Legislation to be Recommended to the Extraordinary Session of the Congress - Tuesday, October 12, 1937

"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."