and creameries to combine carlots of butter for better shipping rates and realize more profit and bargaining power. At the same time, they relinquished some of their independence. Creameries had to conform to specific standards of production and sanitation set up groups of creameries to realize these profits. Farmers had to be more careful in sterilizing equipment and handling milk to receive the price differential paid for high-grade milk and cream which, in turn, yielded the best price for the creameries. The new regulations changed family roles, especially for children: "Kids couldn't do as much after government rules had to be obeyed," said Gerhard Gamradt. "Good, sweet milk brought a better price, so parents paid more attention to everything. Kids did more feeding and easier work, not as much with the milking."

The government continued to respond to farmers' demands for controls and regulations. In 1929 the Federal Farm Marketing Board was established to secure orderly marketing and price stabilization for farm production. Although the board went out of existence in 1933, many agricultural historians believe this legislation was the first step toward permanent government involvement in farm policy. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, New Deal legislation gave emergency credit to low-income farmers, liberalized government lending agency programs, and united them under the Farm Security Administration. Attempts were made to obtain parity prices-a farm product price level maintained through government support to give farmers purchasing power equal to that in a given base period.

Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 farmers received payment for reduced acreage, and subsequent farm surplus policies were based on this principle. Most dairy farmers in Stearns County, however, were not directly affected by this act at the time because they raised crops for feeding cattle rather than for sale and few could afford to let fields lie fallow. The act, declared unconstitutional in 1936 (it was replaced by an act of the same name that incorporated parity pricing in 1938), nevertheless encouraged large farm operations, a step in the "bigger is better" approach to family farming."

In 1937, cooperatives received help via the Agricultural Milk Marketing Agreement Act, designed to guarantee a stable market for milk. Agricultural historian Ingolf Voegler believes that today's regulatory framework for milk and dairy products is rooted in this law because it treats all farmers as equals. Actually, since not all farmers have