BECOMING SHOPPERS: NC Food Consumption and Production

The Great Depression hit America in 1929, and it hit the South hard. A report by the federal government described the South during the Depression as a "belt of sickness, misery, and unnecessary death." Out of 140,000 school children examined in 41 Carolina counties, 23,000 were malnourished.

The Depression was a profoundly difficult time in American history, both economically and socially. People suffered from severe poverty, often unable to feed themselves or their families. To many, the country seemed to have been doing so well and they could not figure out what had gone wrong.

Have you ever heard of the idea of "want in the midst of plenty"?

During the Great Depression, Americans wondered how so many people could be hungry when the country's farmers were producing so much food. North Carolina's farmers were producing plenty of so-called "cash crops" like cotton and tobacco, but they were not making enough money from these crops to afford food. Food was available and cash crops were being grown, but many people simply could not afford it. Between 1929 and 1932, the total amount that North Carolinians made from agriculture plummeted from $310.5 million to less than half that, $144.3 million. With too much cotton and tobacco and too little money to buy food, one government study reported that "too many southern families have simply done without, and as a result they have suffered severely from malnutrition and dietary diseases."

One of these diseases was pellagra, a devistating condition resulting from a chronic lack of niacin (vitamin B₃). Pellagra caused a person's skin to crack and boil up in a similar fashion to leprosy, and victims eventually succumbed to dementia and death. "The sourge of pellagra," wrote government officials, "that affects the South almost exclusively, is a disease chiefly due to inadequate diet; it responds to rather simple preventative measure, including suitable nourishing food."

Diseases like pellagra had not traditionally been recognized as problems of nutrition, because it was only very recently that scientists were learning what role vitamins and other nutrients played in human health. During the 1920s and the 1930s, the federal government, in concert with local officials and Extention Service agents, made an effort to teach North Carolinians how to plan balanced meals during times of scarcity.