ALLOTMENTS Under A. A. A. Programs Obtained from Census and Other Sources

To carry out the purposes of the Agricultural Adjustment Act successfully and with fairness to all sections and individuals, it was necessary first to determine the acreage and production of the different crops by States and counties as a basis for the allotment of permissible acreage and of cash benefits. The responsibility for determination of these base-year figures on acreage and production and of the allotments for States and counties was placed upon the Division of Crop and Livestock Estimates of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.

As groundwork for determining base-year acreages and production, the Bureau had available certain factual data, consisting of the United States census enumeration of 1930, by States and counties, and of similar annual data collected by local assessing officers for a number of important agricultural States. Supplementing these data were cotton-ginning records, by counties, collected by the United States Bureau of the Census; records of receipts of rough rice by mills; of receipts of various grains by mills and elevators; of shipments of grain and vegetables out of important producing areas; of special enumerations and surveys for limited areas; of acreage and production for many irrigation units; and of the Bureau’s own estimates for past years by States, and for some States by counties.

The census figures were the main reliance for basic figures for the year 1929. As a check upon the relation of townships or other sub-divisions within the county to each other, a special tabulation was made of the census records of acreage and production in these minor subdivisions for 1929. The assessors’ enumerations where reasonably complete, were of next importance in determining absolute acreage and production from year to year and relationship as between counties.

As a means of checking the annual enumerations by assessors, there were available for comparison the enumerations by the Federal enumerators with those by the assessors for 1929, and the assessors’ enumerations for successive years with their enumeration for 1929.  The first comparison showed the approximate extent of understatement by the assessors in the census year and the latter indicated whether the successive yearly enumerations by assessors were reasonably uniform as to completeness.

Two main lines of approach were available toward establishing county estimates in the years selected by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration as base years by which to measure relative acreage and production. The first was to take the record of acreage and production by States and break it down, by districts and then by counties, on the basis of the census record of relative acreage and production. The second was to build up from available records the indicated acreage, yield, and production by counties and districts, subsequently modifying the estimates to conform to established State totals. Both of these methods were utilized to a greater or less extent as conditions and records in the various States permitted and the results were checked against one another and by all data available from other sources. In the aggregate, a great deal of factual information was available bearing upon the problem of acreage and production by counties.

Two major objectives were held in mind in establishing estimates of base-year acreage and production and in figuring allotments: (1) To make certain that the success of the entire program of acreage adjustment was not imperiled by giving to the farmers of any section immediate or ultimate benefits to which they were not justly entitled and (2) to be assured that each section and each producer received as nearly as possible the allotment to which the section and the producer were entitled by reason of actual plantings and yields during the base-year period.

Where droughts, floods, and other unusual situations had affected the record to the extent that it tended to deprive communities of a fair participation in the benefits of the program, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration authorities, in their discretion, formulated rules of allowances or of alternative procedures with a view to equalizing the benefits of the plan to all communities.

In making up the record of base-year performance and establishing allotments, due consideration was given to all factual data, both those assembled by the Bureau and those presented from any other source.  Appeals by States and counties for larger allotments were often made on the basis of locally assembled data. Examination of such material in some instances disclosed the need for changes in the preliminary estimates and allotments but much oftener the data presented were found to be unreliable. The assessors’ data were very good in some States but poor in others and entirely lacking for a majority of the States outside those of the north-central geographic division. They were not uniformly good in all counties even where available. Every effort was made to allow for the variation in completeness of these data in the different counties.