ABSTRACT
Agricultural legislation in the 1950s ended with setting aside provisions of the permanent legislation. The permanent legislation corrected constitutional problems and allowed the continuation of agricultural commodity support programs. This chapter discusses how US agricultural policy has evolved through periods of contention and support and some of the reasons why farm legislation has survived disagreements that have lasted into the twenty-first century. The idea behind McNary-Haugen was to reduce domestic supply in order to raise prices for supported farm commodities through government purchases. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 is said to be the basis for all subsequent and future US agricultural legislation. Protective tariffs were principal tools of early American agricultural policy, primarily to raise revenue for the Federal government. Without new farm bill legislation, the permanent legislation once again becomes the law of the land, including the implementation of parity prices, quotas, and allotments for supported crops.
