Agriculture had been in a depression since the 1920’s. The market for US grain during WW I dried up. By the 1930’s a drought in the Great Plains made things even worse. They called it the “Dirty Thirties” because of the dust storms. My grandfather sent a load of grain to market and received a bill for the balance of the shipping; the grain sold for less than the cost of freight. But, you are correct, at lest there was something to eat on the farm. I do not think today’s generations would have the sand to do what my parents and grand parents did to survive.
—and ,unfortunately, many of the grand and great grandchildren of the people of the “thirties still think that Herbert Hoover went farm-to-farm making them poor—and reflexively vote Democrap to this day—
My grandfather told me several times about driving a herd of cattle to the rail yard and shipping them to Kansas City. They lacked $3 a head bringing enough to pay the freight. Therefore, he did not ship the corn. They built stills and cooked moonshine from it and bootlegged it and kept the family fed. He had to give one out of 5 jugs to the sheriff for protection.
There was no market for cattle and the government set up a program to buy the cattle from the ranchers. The deal was the rancher had to agree to sell them every head- could not keep any back for breeding. The government did not tell the ranchers what they planned to do with the cattle- but they sent men out to shoot them on the ranches and left them to rot with people starving in the cities. My dad was 15 and left home when that happened, he road freight trains around and worked odd jobs and didn't go home until he married my mother 10 years later. He knew his family could not afford him and there were younger children to feed.
I came along at the tail end of the depression. My parents had work, here in the midwest- and we had two huge gardens. Alot of canning- chickens, ducks, geese and guinias- I remember one of the “had been prominent” and “later again prominent” businessmen bumming nickles and quarters from my dad til my mom put the kabosh on that. I remember my folks were not able to have a cow, we were by a few feet in the city limits. I also remember pheasant hunting. My mother sewed- bought chicken feed in 50 pound bags, buying several at a time that matched- used for clothing as well as the plain white feed sacks. They turned into sheets, and as they wore out, became pillow cases, then hankies, and finally clean white clothes for cuts etc.
No I don’t think people have what it takes to do that today.