While the overall U.S. economy was booming and the stock market was soaring as the American Feed Manufacturers Association started its third decade in 1929, agriculture remained in a slump begun several years earlier.
Demand and prices for agricultural products plunged after World War I. Gross income from farm production peaked at nearly $17 billion in 1916, fell to less than $9 billion in 1920 and partially recovered to the $11-billion range from 1923 through 1929.
The crashing stock market ushered in the Great Depression. Gross income from farm production plummeted to just $5.3 billion in 1932. The combined value of farmers’ land, buildings, machinery and livestock plunged from $78 billion in 1920 to $35 billion in 1933.
The disastrous changes in farmers’ gross incomes and property values took a heavy toll on the feed industry. USDA reported that feed sales had topped $1 billion from 1918 through 1920, but eroded for the next decade, then dropped to near $400 million in 1932.
As prices dropped in the 1930s to a nickel a bushel for corn, hog prices fell to as little as 50 cents per hundredweight for poor grades, and top steers brought only $7 to $8 per head. Those prices didn’t leave much room to buy feed. “Some folks cried ‘over production,’” reported William T. Diamond, director of the AFMA Agricultural Service Division, in 1948. “Nature took over and gave us our worst drought.” Farmers joined together to limit production and get help from federal programs and loans.
“Even the feed manufacturers became more closely knit, realizing as individuals they could exert little strength, but as an organization they had power to do the job well,” said Diamond. “Membership in AFMA doubled compared to a decade earlier.”
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