Tip Estes, a hired hand on an Indiana Farm, operating a tractor.
The New Deal:
To reduce surpluses that kept crop prices low, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was created in 1933 to pay farmers to keep some fields fallow. After the Supreme Court declared much of the law behind the AAA unconstitutional, Congress found new ways to continue subsidies.
Today:
U.S. farmers receive some $5 billion a year in subsidies that Barack Obama has called "wasteful spending."
By Eric Dodds and Rebecca Kaplan