The Agricultural New Deal

Among economic historians, the consequences of the agricultural crisis of the early 1930s are still the subject of debate. But it is certain that the collapse of food prices, the market for which has been global since 1870, provoked partly similar reactions in Europe and the United States, and revived a reflection on the role of the State in the economy. In a recent book on the New Deal, Kiran Klaus Patel shows to what extent American agricultural policies were developed in a process of complex dialogue with the public policies of other countries, and how they were shaped by debates on the “isms” (communism, fascism, liberalism, etc.) so characteristic of the interwar period. Many articles and books have also addressed the role played by international organizations, such as the League of Nations, which attempted to coordinate the response to the “agricultural crisis”, understood as a specific dimension of the broader economic depression of the 1930s.

Reorganize the market

A previous volume, edited by Alain Chatriot in collaboration with E. Leblanc and E. Lynch, devoted to the grain trade during the interwar period, already dealt with the question of the reorganization of the wheat market in different countries. In La Politique du Blé, only France is discussed. How did a public policy as controversial as the Office du Blé become a fundamental element of French agriculture? By what process did the Office du Blé become a recognized player in the modernization of French agriculture, when in its early days, agricultural organizations had violently opposed it – because they feared that it would herald a collectivization on the Soviet model, and their resistance had lasted several years? The Wheat Policy begins by describing in detail the creation of the Office du Blé in the 1930s (first part of the book), then traces its first years of existence, up to the French defeat during the Second World War (second part).

Throughout 500 dense pages, Chatriot reconstructs the positions of the various social and political actors who intervened in the debate on wheat in the 1930s. He chooses to begin his study at the beginning of the 1930s, when France, despite the faith of its leaders in its good economic health, was affected by the global economic crisis and the collapse of agricultural commodity prices. Wheat had been a globalized commodity since the 19^e century, and French prices followed the trends of the world markets in London and Chicago. Chatriot describes the almost panicked reaction of wheat producers, and the complex relationships that developed between the government, producers, millers, traders, and the parties in parliament. The idea of ​​state control met with great reluctance, particularly in a sector like agriculture, which had been largely unaffected by the mergers and cartelization that characterized the industrial sector. In 1930, the agricultural sector was still largely composed of a myriad of farmers without political representation, which gave it considerable political weight, particularly in democratic countries. Consequently, the rationalization and modernization of this sector was a key issue for most European societies in the interwar period. Since wheat was a staple product for most farmers, many countries made regulating its production and trade the core of their agricultural policies, while using fertilizers and machinery to increase production and new silo technology to improve storage and transportation.

Democratic countries generally adopted the concept of monopoly much more slowly than authoritarian countries – despite their experience of military planning during the First World War. By the early 1930s, the Socialist proposal for a state monopoly on wheat had entered the debate – but except among the Socialists, it was only raised as a foil. According to Chatriot, before the electoral victory of the Popular Front in 1936, a state monopoly on wheat was an almost inconceivable idea to producers, millers and traders. They saw it only as a potentially disastrous development of the price controls that had been imposed in the early 1930s. But after the very good harvests of 1938, wheat producers began to think of the Wheat Board as a lesser evil.

Changes in opinions and international context

Chatriot’s book mainly seeks to show how the debate between experts (particularly legal experts), commercial organizations (chambers of commerce, producers’ associations, etc.) and politicians has gradually changed tone, under the pressure of falling prices on a global scale and the emergence of new political coalitions. To do this, the author uses countless sources, from the specialized press of the professions concerned to law theses, including prefectural archives and parliamentary sessions. This wealth of documentation is undoubtedly the major asset of the book, as “delightful to read as L’Officiel the day after a passionate parliamentary debate” (to use the terms in which an agricultural journal described in 1937 what the legislation on wheat prices inspired in it). Like Chatriot’s previous work on the National Economic Council, this book is an essential starting point for historians of French society and the creation of economic policy in the 1930s. The documents that Chatriot presents to readers could be very useful in resituating the debates between the ideological alternatives of the 1930s (Sovietism, agrarianism, capitalism, corporatism, etc.) in the concrete functioning of French institutions and actors in society.

These terms are constantly evoked and invoked in the documents cited in the book; these sources thus regularly compare the French situation with those of other countries. The fear of communism seems to be widespread; but there are also many mentions of Italian corporatism, as well as references to the various ways in which other countries have managed the issue of overproduction of agricultural commodities. Despite the wealth of documentation at his disposal, Chatriot avoids directly addressing the intellectual debate between the different “-isms”, and asserts that it is “the French institutional heritage that matters with regard to the creation of the Office du Blé” (p. 307). It is regrettable that this question has not been explicitly addressed – it is contained in the book in two lines and a footnote – especially since while several recent works have looked at agricultural policies from an ideological point of view, there are very few studies on the French case approached from this angle. In any case, Chatriot underlines the relative “insularity” of French administrative practices, which remained insensitive to the seduction of foreign models. However, the sources he cites explicitly establish a continuity between the policies of the interwar period and the war period. Given the high degree of coordination of the Allies in the area of ​​supply, it seems plausible that forms of exchange or contamination could have occurred at that time. Furthermore, as mentioned above, the crisis in agricultural commodity prices was a global phenomenon that led to an equally global reaction: the international conferences on wheat organized by the League of Nations are a good example. These conferences, in which French diplomats and economic experts participated, alongside experts from the International Institute of Agriculture and the League of Nations, soon played the role of a showcase for the national policies of the various countries. To what extent were French actors really isolated from the international debate? This does not mean, however, that Chatriot is wrong in thinking that French political leaders had only a superficial knowledge of the experiments conducted outside their borders, and only mentioned them as a rhetorical device.

What factors influenced the actors’ opinions?

The Wheat Policy looks a bit like RashomonAkira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, in which each character tells the story of a murder as he or she saw it. By skillfully weaving together a series of quotes, the book almost lets the actors in the decision-making process “speak for themselves” and express their different points of view on the French wheat economy. This choice is justified: businessmen and political leaders made their decisions on the basis of what they believed they knew about the economic situation, not on our hypothetical reconstructions of the economic trends of the time. But it is unfortunate that the only sources cited in the book on the economic situation of the French countryside are the reports sent by the prefects to the Ministry of the Interior. Statistics were widely used at the time, and an analysis of their results could have strengthened the author’s arguments. Certainly, if the author had analyzed in detail the techniques of estimating French wheat production and the price indexes used to demonstrate the fall in sales prices and the rise in investment costs, he would probably have weighed down his book with long and tedious details. But the work would have benefited from it: it would have been useful to have more precision on the figures that the actors actually knew, and readers would also have better understood why farmers ended up accepting the idea of ​​the Wheat Office if they had had more information on the economic trends that the political actors were experiencing.

Chatriot also does not mention the financial constraints that affected the functioning of the Office immediately after its creation in 1936. Chapters 5 and 6, devoted to the activity of the Office, do not dwell on the functioning of the tax imposed on producers or on the budget of the Office. However, the reader might find it useful to know that the Office was very costly to the State or that its operating costs were mainly covered by the tax imposed on producers. Of course, this was not the subject of this already imposing study, and it remains to be hoped that it will inspire other researchers to explore the details of the activity of the Office. Financial constraints are an integral part of the genesis of all public policies; as such, they deserve special attention.

But the richness of this book lies in the rigor and the relentless meticulousness with which the author describes the positions of a great many actors. Chatriot does not limit himself to studying the constitution of a political coalition, nor to describing administrative practices – he strives to carry out a pioneering work of historical sociology of the State. Even if the reader can sometimes get lost in the details, no one before Chatriot had brought together in a book such a wealth of documentation on the genesis of the National Interprofessional Wheat Office – which influenced for a long time not only French agricultural policies, but also the European Common Agricultural Policy. As such, this book constitutes an essential reference for the history of French agriculture between the two wars (the bibliography that closes the book is in itself a scientific success). But this work also calls for new research on the economic dimension of the policies of the 1930s.