Legislation and the Development Of U.S. Grain Expansionism in the 1970s

Abstract

U.S. agricultural legislation, aimed until the 1970s at limiting farm production, has changed fundamentally in recent years. First, a series of major governmental measures was taken to regulate agriculture, the goals being to expand farm exports, particularly of grain, and to increase the effectiveness of agriculture. The rising world demand for grain required a fundamental change in the established policy of government regulation of agriculture. With the adoption of the Agricultural and Consumer Protection Act of 1973 (1) and the Agricultural Act of 1977 (2), the prevailing policy of land conservation and price stabilization, previously aimed at reducing farm production, came to be replaced by a policy of stimulating farm production, a policy of making grain production capable of standing up in market competition within the country and, primarily, in foreign trade as well. The principal goals of the farm policy expressed in the 1973 law were to enlarge the grain market in every possible way, increase the level of grain production, remove limitations on production, and reduce the government's grain reserves. The law of 1977 eliminated quotas on grain plantings, increased appropriations for the development of agricultural research, and introduced a system of target prices keyed to production costs, replacing the previous parity supplements oriented toward compensating for the differences between the prices for farm products and the goods purchased by farmers.