ABSTRACT
In 1985 the U.S. Congress will confront the formidable task of developing omnibus legislation to succeed the Food and Agriculture Act of 1981. It will be a difficult, complex task. Tied as they are to a long series of legislative precedents, to deeply embedded goals and objectives, and to the vested interests of many groups, current policies will not yield easily to change. American agriculture, however, continues to evolve in ways which undermine some of the very premises of past and current policies. Policies predicated on the concept of agriculture as a unique closed sector of the economy appear less and less appropriate to the highly interdependent, open agricultural economy of the 1980s.
