I'm reading Jan Poppendeik's book, Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat and, early on in the book, she looks at the early days of the US' Great Depression. In 1930-31, the breadlines had formed in almost every city, town, and village in America. 1931 saw the first great drought—though not yet the extended “Dustbowl” drought—of the depression. As Amartya Sen has written, when a famine occurs, there are three alternatives for people: First, get a new, or additional, job. As this was the Great Depression, this wasn't possible. Second, rely on extended family. By 1931, this option was pretty much exhausted. And third, rely on charity.
This was the position of most of the jobless in the US. When the drought hit, it was also the position of a great many farmers. Charity was being administered by local governments (primarily at the municipal level) and the Red Cross. There were a patchwork collection of programmes and initiatives across the country; some, like the relief gardens which were planted (and the surplus canned by civic, fraternal, and religious organizations), encouraged by members of the federal government. But most programmes were only local and, under Hoover, the US federal government wanted nothing to do with relief programmes.
Except, of course, when they did. By 1931, there was two billion dollars (that's two billion depression-era dollars) budgeted for business and financial sector relief. And a couple of years earlier, farm price supports had been instituted, with the US government buying up wheat and slowly releasing it into the international market, to slow price fluctuations, and try to ensure that the American farmers got a livable price for the grain they were growing. Which makes sense; if your crop all comes in at once, prices tend to tumble around harvest. Farmers able to store large volumes of grain can take advantage of the price differential between fall and spring, but most people needed money by the end of the growing season. Mostly because that's when the operating loans are due.
The problem in the US was that the government had accumulated a very large storehouse of wheat; by 1931, a hundred and sixty million bushels. Which cost money to store—about $0.18/bu/year. The US also had a significant population reliant on charity—in particular, reliant on charity for food. To various politicians and reformers, it seemed like a no-brainer to release a portion of the wheat stores held by the federal government for relief.
The Hoover administration was never too open about it's opposition to releasing the wheat. But they certainly encouraged opposition. The big roadblocks were two: concern about the release of "free" wheat on the US market, and the belief, at least among the more conservative members of Congress and the Senate, that reports of hunger in the US were overblown.
