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Rationing and Price Control

Another problem for the farmer was the shortage of farm machinery.
When war was declared, producers of food were advised to
buy repair parts for their equipment during the first months of 1942,
and many farmers followed this wise counsel. When, late in that
year, farm machinery began to be rationed, with some seventy-five
types of machines being doled out carefully when they were available,
members of the local Farm Machinery Rationing Committee
and the County War Board applied quotas to insure a just distribution
of such items as could be obtained. In 1943, as a matter of
national policy, munitions were granted priority over food production
equipment. As a result only forty percent as much farm machinery
as had been manufactured in the nation in 1940 left the
factories three years later. The same conditions, or worse, prevailed
in 1944, and there was no improvement in 1945.[22]

As the production of food increased each war year, the problem
of marketing was intensified. The Extension Service assisted the
Albemarle Dairymen's Association, the Albemarle Feeder Calf Producers
Association, the Albemarle Wool Pool (affiliated with the
United Wool Growers Association), the Virginia Angus Breeders
Association, and the Albemarle Hereford Association in determining
correct grades for their products, the demand for them, and the best
methods of marketing them. The total value of supplies bought and
farm products marketed by these groups in Albemarle County during
1944 was $449,670. The establishment of a farmers' produce market
in Charlottesville was discussed, but no successful action was
taken.[23]

Price ceilings, the capstone of the arch erected by the nation to
hold back disastrous inflation, were sometimes restrictive enough to

cause temporary bottlenecks in the flow of agricultural produce to
market. Seventy-five members of the Albemarle County Farm Bureau,
which was formed in June, 1943, to promote farmers' interests,
met to discuss the possible effect on farmers of the closing of the
Elliott Ice Company's abattoir department, the only slaughterhouse
in the community. The Albemarle livestock raisers seized upon this
opportunity to air their grievances concerning other Office of Price
Administration and War Food Administration regulations, such as
the fact that hogs were bringing twenty cents more per hundred
pounds in Staunton and Orange, Virginia, than on the Charlottesville
market. No explanation was given: O. P. A. officials insisted
that they were specialists in other fields or had been with the O. P. A.
such a short time that they were prepared to discuss only the abattoir
issue.[24]

A ceiling price of 5.75 cents per pound or $2.76 per forty-eight
pound package (slightly less than the normal fifty-pound bushel)
on apples at point of shipment was announced in October, 1943.
Price advances of approximately eighteen cents each which were to
become effective on November 1, December 1, February 1, and April 1
would enable growers to sell their apples in April, 1944, at $3.48
per forty-eight pound package. This encouraged most orchardists to
store as many of their apples as possible until the ceilings reached
the announced peak. To protect itself, the government reserved the
right to buy apples for the armed forces at any time it chose. Retail
ceilings for apples ranged from 9.5 to 10.5 cents per pound, varying
with the distances they had been shipped from producing areas. These
ceilings were also to advance one-half cent per pound on November
1, December 1, February 1, and April 1.[25]

Government purchases of apples were made in Albemarle County
both before and during the war. In 1941 the Surplus Marketing
Administration was buying apples in an attempt to improve distribution
by preventing a glutted market. A price range of seventy
cents to $1.05 per bushel was then offered by this agency for No. 1
grade apples. In October, 1944, the War Food Administration announced
plans for the purchase of a large quantity of apples in the
four-state Appalachian Area, which included Albemarle County, for
Lend-Lease shipment to Great Britain and other European countries.
For 2 to 2.25 inch apples the price offered was $6.75 a barrel, $2.25
a box. Growers in this locality were satisfied with the price set by
the W. F. A., but the Appalachian Apple Growers, Inc., protested
the government offer at a level below the price ceiling of $2.75,
arguing that it might break the domestic market. It was understood,
however, that the domestic market would have priority if the crop
could be absorbed above the prices offered by the W. F. A. The
export program would receive only that part of the crop not sold
at home to equal or better advantage. Under this W. F. A. program

twenty carloads of Albemarle County apples were sold by November
8. Offers were filed with the Winchester, Virginia, office of the
W. F. A., which accepted the apples packed in “export tub” bushel
baskets.[26]

In 1943 No. 1 grade peaches brought $8.50 a bushel, the highest
price ever offered by Crozet brokers. Twenty-four peach growers
of Albemarle and surrounding counties met in February, 1944, when
a ceiling price for peaches was under consideration, and approved
unanimously the work already done by the two-year-old National
Peach Council. They voted to continue to give it their support. The
local growers asked first, in dealing with O. P. A., for no ceilings,
because the extreme perishability of peaches made marketing controls
or delay of any kind hazardous. If it were found that ceilings had
to be applied, the growers asked a “consumer” ceiling of 12.5 cents
per pound, the same figure requested by apple growers nationally in
the fall of 1943. The price ceiling set in July, 1944, for producers
was $3.66 per bushel and $1.99 per half bushel, equivalent to about
$7.50 a bushel at the consumer level. In the same month the Virginia
Peach Council, which was to become a part of the National
Peach Council, was organized when two dozen or more leading peach
growers of the Middle Piedmont met in Charlottesville. Its object
was to develop united action in trying to solve such problems as labor,
packaging, relations with government officials in Washington, and
the creation of increased consumer demand for their fruit, particularly
in future years which might be threatened by a glutted market.[27]