This film was selected into the National Film Registry in 1990 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
After the success of this film, President Roosevelt asked Pare Lorentz to help establish the United States Film Service. That agency would produce three films: The Fight for Life (1940), Power and the Land (1940), and The Land (1942), before the unit was disbanded by Congress in 1941. He would also shoot footage of the Nuremberg Trials that was incorporated into Nuremberg: The 60th Anniversary Director's Cut (2007).
Produced by the U.S. Government's Farm Security Administration, the successor agency to the Resettlement Administration which funded Pare Lorentz's previous documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936). These agencies were part of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs.