Farm Security Administration

Farm Security Administration

Farm Security Administration logo
Agency overview
Formed	September 1, 1937 (1937-09-01)
Preceding agencies	Resettlement Administration Federal Emergency Relief Administration
Dissolved	1946
Superseding agency	Farmers Home Administration
Key documents	Farm Security Act Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).^[1]

The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–1944, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. The photographs in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937–1942), and the Office of War Information (1942–1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and nongovernmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.^[2]

In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA/OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. Color transparencies also made by the FSA/OWI are available in a separate section of the catalog, FSA/OWI Color Photographs.^[2]

The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming.

Reactionary critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an alleged experiment in collectivizing agriculture—that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. After the Conservative coalition took control of Congress, it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and that program continues to operate in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.