Rural Poverty

Land of Plenty

by Lucienne Bloch

Bloch created her woodcut, Land of Plenty, the same year she joined the Federal Art Project (FAP). 

A comment on the fate of poor farmers, the scene shows a poor, rural family of indeterminate race physically separated from the new electrical innovations and towering corn stalks by a barbed wire fence. 

The problem during the Depression was not a lack of food, but a lack of money – city dwellers could not afford to buy food from the farmers, forcing the farmers out of business despite their booming crops.