Title: What Are Commodity Crops and Why Do They Matter? | Hampden Park Food Cooperative | Saint Paul, MN
Headings: What Are Commodity Crops and Why Do They Matter?
What Are Commodity Crops and Why Do They Matter?
— by Lois Braun
How price supports work
Industrial ag gets involved
Politics and the Farm Bill
What's wrong with the system
A better way?
Resources
International Year of Cooperatives

Content: What Are Commodity Crops and Why Do They Matter? | Hampden Park Food Cooperative | Saint Paul, MN
What Are Commodity Crops and Why Do They Matter? — by Lois Braun
Commodity crops are any crops that are traded. Generally they are relatively nonperishable, storable, transportable, and undifferentiated: one corn kernel looks like any other corn kernel. But in our national discussion about food and agriculture policy, “commodity crop” refers to those that are regulated by federal programs under the commodity title of the U.S. Farm Bill. There have been 20 of them (listed in the box below), but the major five (in bold) that take the lion’s share of taxpayer money are cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice. The Farm Commodity Program got its start in the 1930s, as part of FDR’s New Deal. At that time most North Americans lived on farms and most farmers were poor. Because there was no price floor, when prices of farm crops fell below the cost of production, farmers could lose everything.