ABSTRACT
The Democratic National Committee (Democratic National Committee, 1984) summarized the results of a recent series of farm policy hearings as follows: “When all was said and done it came down to one word: price.” The dominance and persistence of this sentiment are apparent in the fact that U.S. agricultural policy has for 50 years consisted of commodity programs intended to support prices. A case can be made that this focus on price is misguided. Some of the policy options that will be considered here are ways of pursuing objectives of farm policy without the price fixation of past programs.
