ABSTRACT
Farm policy has evolved into a food and agricultural policy over the past 50 years. In this evolution we have added some food programs and some export programs, but the central core of that policy has been and continues to be the commodity programs. We have tinkered with these commodity programs in each piece of new legislation; but, in the 1980s as in the 1930s, they are concerned primarily with managing supplies, supporting prices, and making payments to farmers.
