Every time the Farm Bill comes up for debate, there are numerous ideas about how to “fix” the commodity programs. Calls abound to add new programs, scale back existing ones, tweak the payments here and there, and even scrap subsidies entirely (this recent New York Times editorial caused a bit of a stir). Not all of these ideas are new, however, and some of them have been tried before. As more people become interested in the Farm Bill and its impact on what we grow and consume, I think it’s important to understand a bit of the history behind why these programs are they way they are in order to talk about how we might want to change them.
Coupled and Decoupled Payments
