n. The ultimate decision was made by the
members of the county committee who had been elected by the taxpayers.
"I've often wondered whether our judgment was accurate enough to really
be used, but it was used," commented Holden Harrison who sat on the
board.[216] The AAA county committee sought to be equitable in its
determinations, but as in any process which tries to fit a series of
requirements to individual cases, the decisions sometimes seemed
arbitrary or unfair. Derr cited a case resulting from the Potato Act
(which required a farmer to pay a penalty for yields exceeding his
allotment) in which an older couple had "had poor luck with their
potatoes for the base years; [they] almost wept when they learned that
their future lease would be only forty bushels and they would have to
pay a tax on what they sold over that amount."[217] Snags also occurred
in the administration of the farm loan program, designed by the
government to aid farmers in the purchase of seed and fertilizer. Not
only were elaborate accounts of mortgage, store and personal debts,
unpaid taxes and notes required (sometimes for a loan of $25.00), but
repayment of the loan was set for dates such as July 1, when the crops
were not yet harvested and ready cash was scarce. As a result, much of
the money designated for aid to Fairfax County was never applied
for.[218] To the farmer, accustomed to deciding for himself what and
when he would plant, and unfamiliar with the niceties of bureaucratic
finagling, the government sometimes seemed more geared to interference
than assistance.

In reality, the programs affected Fairfax County less than other parts
of northern Virginia. Statistics from the Virginia Department of
Agriculture and the USDA show that only 71 wheat adjustment contracts
were taken out in Fairfax County in 1935, compared to 233 for Fauquier
County and 351 for Loudoun County. As each of these neighboring counties
contained over 2,000 farms, these are small figures indeed.[219]

The federal government set few limits on milk or poultry production, the
county's two main economic sources, so the benefits of the AAA programs
were often indirect. The principal effect was to force farmers to set
aside about 15% of their land from wheat or corn production. Because
Fairfax County farmers marketed little of their grain production, the
outcome was that they received a bounty for planting another crop on
this acreage, or allowing it to lie fallow and b