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: 1) Control supply, because when supply goes down, price goes up; 2) establish and enforce a fair price in the marketplace; or 3) simply pay farmers the difference between the current price and a target fair price (so-called “counter-cyclical payments”). All commodity programs do one or more of these things. When initially set up in the 1930s, the farm program took the first approach, controlling supply by requiring participating farmers to take land out of production, the so-called “land banks” or “set-asides." Participating farmers were also required to use good conservation practices as a
condition for their participation. The government also purchased and stored agricultural products in years of surplus, to take them off the market and drive prices higher, and put them back on the market in years of deficit. Food assistance programs, such as food stamps and foreign food aid, arose as methods to dispose of this surplus. ( Criticisms of this are that it creates food dependency in this country and undercuts Third World farmers.) Industrial ag gets involved
Large industrial agriculture interests never liked the fact that prices were controlled by government intervention.