<P> The aim of the AAA was to raise prices for commodities through artificial scarcity . The AAA used a system of "domestic allotments", setting total output of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, rice, tobacco, and wheat . The farmers themselves had a voice in the process of using government to benefit their incomes . The AAA paid land owners subsidies for leaving some of their land idle with funds provided by a new tax on food processing . The goal was to force up farm prices to the point of "parity", an index based on 1910--1914 prices . To meet 1933 goals, 10 million acres (40,000 km) of growing cotton was plowed up, bountiful crops were left to rot, and six million piglets were killed and discarded . The idea was the less produced, the higher the wholesale price and the higher income to the farmer . Farm incomes increased significantly in the first three years of the New Deal, as prices for commodities rose . Food prices remained well below 1929 levels . </P> <P> The AAA established a long - lasting federal role in the planning of the entire agricultural sector of the economy, and was the first program on such a scale on behalf of the troubled agricultural economy . The original AAA did not provide for any sharecroppers or tenants or farm laborers who might become unemployed, but there were other New Deal programs especially for them, such as the Farm Security Administration . </P> <P> In 1936, the Supreme Court declared the AAA to be unconstitutional for technical reasons; it was replaced by a similar program that did win Court approval . Instead of paying farmers for letting fields lie barren, the new program instead subsidized them for planting soil enriching crops such as alfalfa that would not be sold on the market . Federal regulation of agricultural production has been modified many times since then, but together with large subsidies the basic philosophy of subsidizing farmers is still in effect in 2015 . </P> <P> Many rural people lived in severe poverty, especially in the South . Major programs addressed to their needs included the Resettlement Administration (RA), the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), rural welfare projects sponsored by the WPA, NYA, Forest Service and CCC, including school lunches, building new schools, opening roads in remote areas, reforestation, and purchase of marginal lands to enlarge national forests . In 1933, the Administration launched the Tennessee Valley Authority, a project involving dam construction planning on an unprecedented scale in order to curb flooding, generate electricity, and modernize the very poor farms in the Tennessee Valley region of the Southern United States . </P>

What role did farmers have in western expansion