( 153 ) 



should curtail food production and "adjust to the domestic 

 market." The crop controllers won and a restriction program 

 was inaugurated. Strangely enough, acreage restrictions 

 were imposed on sugar beets and other commodities for 

 which we have little foreign trade or which we actually im- 

 port. 



There is considerable evidence to indicate that the low 

 prices of agricultural products during this tune were due, not 

 to a loss of our foreign market, but to the world-wide price 

 deflation, which practically no country escaped, whether it 

 imported, exported, or was self-sufficient. Furthermore, our 

 lost foreign market was not a depression phenomenon. It had 

 been going on, with interruptions, since 1900 (figure 1). "The 

 loss of our foreign market" was merely another way of saying 



FIGURE 1. THE VALUE OF NET EXPORTS OR IMPORTS OF FOOD 

 IN PER CENT OF FARM INCOME, 1882 TO 1940 



fQQO '390 fSOO /9fO !3aO /93O IS4& 



From about 1880 to about 1900, net exports mounted relative to produc- 

 tion. Thereafter exports declined, then vanished, and imports became the 

 rule. This downward trend in exports and the rising importance of imports 

 have been confused by World Wars I and II, which temporarily reversed 

 the normal trends. 



