Small Agriculture: A National Agricultural Library Digital Exhibit

Beltrami Island Farms (Minnesota)

National Agricultural Library

subsistence homesteads

With the decline of agricultural prices after the World War, it became evident that many people had established themselves on land unfit for successful farming. After the economic crisis of 1929-30, the pressure of population on the land increased and the distress of those in the poorer areas grew steadily worse. In order to maintain oublic services for the tax-delinquent farmers located on this poor land, the better situated farmers in these regions and the taxpayers in other parts of the farming states had to carry a steadily mounting tax burden. A large part of the local school cost was met with state aid, and counties and states had to shoulder road costs and relief in many townships.

It became apparent that steps had to be taken to ease these inequitable tax burdens, or at least to prevent future costly settlement of sub- marginal lands. In 1934 the Federal Government began a small program of helping farm families to move out of submarginal areas and get a new start on better land elsewhere.

In northern Minnesota, two cut-over forest areas were chosen for an experiment in this sort of relocation. Here the need for some such action was unusually pressing. Better land was available nearby, and relocation would involve a minimum of expense and social readjustment.

One of the two areas was the Beltrami Island region, covering about 742,000 acres, of which approximately 7 percent lay in Roseau County, 50 percent in Lake of the Woods County, and 43 percent in Beltrami County. The other was on Pine Island in adjoining Koochiching County, containing 614,000 acres. Both areas together extended over an area of one and a half million acres, in which a scattered population of 430 settlers were living.

It was planned to move these farmers out of the submarginal cut-over areas and give them a new start on better land, where they would be able to get all available government services at a considerable saving to the local taxpayers. The submarginal land was to be taken out of cultivation and put to better uses. The northern Minnesota relocation program covering these two areas soon became popularly known as the “Beltrami Island Project.”

Farm Security Administration

1940