Eighty years ago, the Congress and the country were locked in a rancorous debate; is there a place for a national food and agriculture policy in this country? It was a pressing matter at the time—the prosperity of the pre-World War I era had given way to sharply lower commodity prices, leading to the 1919 crash in land values. Congress in 1921 had moved cautiously to enact legislation cracking down on futures trading abuses; to pass the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921 which addressed anti-competitive practices in meat packing and processing; and to adopt the Capper-Volstead Act in 1922 which, for the first time, provided a framework for farmers to bargain collectively in producing and marketing their products (Baumel, 2002).
But efforts to raise commodity prices and stabilize the sector were fruitless until the 1930s. By that time, the well-known head of the Bureau of Agricultural Economies, H.C. Taylor, had been fired for speaking out on the need for a new farm policy and the country had been through lengthy and boisterous debates about the McNary-Haugen bill and other proposals to raise commodity prices domestically.1
The 1930s brought a sea change in thinking about farm policy. The desperate economic state of the country (as well as the decade-old economic problems of the agricultural sector) generated enough political support for a bold shift in farm policy (Berry, 2002). The Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, was given unprecedented power to attempt to balance demand and supply, soil conservation legislation was passed, bills to provide credit for agriculture were enacted and rural electrification was given a huge boost.
U.S. agriculture was at a crossroads in 1932 and the country chose to move aggressively toward a national food and agriculture policy.
Need for a global food and agriculture policy
Today, U.S.......
