Why do we have farm programs

Farm problems are on the U.S. policy agenda largely because dissatisfied farmers, working through their special interest groups and their congressmen, put them there. For the most part, Farm Bills are written by the special interest groups that are affected by the Bill. The policies that arise out of Farm Bill debates reflect the compromises that result from Congressional efforts to deal with peoples' conflicting views about what ought to be. They reflect the beliefs and values of farmers and others concerning equity and efficiency in the farm sector and the economy as a whole.

People disagree about beliefs and values and about the effects of programs. Some contend that farmers are in a chronically disadvantaged disequilibrium situation and they believe that this situation is not self-correcting and is not of the farmers' own making. They believe that the sector deserves compensating intervention through government programs. Others believe that agricultural commodity markets operate competitively so that all resources would be exactly and fairly compensated for their contribution to output if the government would withdraw from farm programs and the free markets were allowed to bring about equilibrium adjustments.

Since 1933, the primary thrust of U.S. farm policy has been to transfer income from the non-farm sector to what farmers and many policy makers believed was a "relatively disadvantaged" farm sector. Programs that were intended to be temporary when introduced in the 1930s have persisted. And, they have evolved over time to address problems which grew out of their own unintended consequences. Many, though not all, consider past programs to be increasingly inappropriate as U.S. agriculture continues to change.

Differences in emphasis can be detected from one year to another in the national debates on farm policy, but over the decades there has been a consistency in the problems that Congress attemps to deal with; including price and income prospects, the distribution of income, the role of technology, the availability of resources, expansion of domestic and foreign markets, risk management, financial stress, and others.

Brandow's review of the literature on "Policy for Commercial Agriculture, 1945-71" makes it clear that the issues faced by Congress today are not new. Ted Schultz, D. Gale Johnson, Brandow, and a multitude of economist's following