ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the critical policy forces and problems of distinct periods, and then to follow with the policies that were adopted. Fundamental to the inquiry is the recognition that, in the United States, public agricultural and food policy is developed in the policy-making processes of a participatory political system. With the bullish economic conditions for agriculture during this brief period of prosperity, there was little call for substantive changes during the next policy cycle, which produced the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973. The policy development period of the last half of the 1980s experienced no unique economic shocks such as those that characterized the previous decade and a half. Economic and political forces alike dominated the 1990 policy development cycle. Although the rapidly changing economic environment did not signal a major policy change when the next policy cycle began, the four-year Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 did chart a path toward increasing comprehensiveness of policy issues.
