Farm Bill

Farm bills are the primary legislative instruments of agricultural and food policy in the United States and typically have far-reaching effects across multiple areas of U.S. life and policy. When reference is made to “the farm bill,” what is referred to is the most recently passed farm bill—the one that is currently applicable. A new farm bill is passed every few years, generally in expectation of the preset expiration of the previous one; in the past, farm bills have held for as little as one year and as long as 10 years.

The first farm bill was the Agricultural Act of 1933, a key piece of later New Deal legislation introducing several concepts important to U.S. agricultural policy ever since. The full list of farm bills follows:

1933: Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 1938: Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938

1948: Agricultural Act of 1948

[Page 161]1949: Agricultural Act of 1949

1954: Agricultural Act of 1954

1956: Agricultural Act of 1956

1965: Food and Agricultural Act of 1965

1970: Agricultural Act of 1970

1973: Agricultural and Consumer Protection Act of 1973

1977: Food and Agriculture Act of 1977

1981: Agriculture and Food Act of 1981

1985: Food Security Act of 1985

1990: Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990

1996: Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996

2002: Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002

2008: Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008

The 1933 farm bill created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a New Deal agency that oversaw agricultural subsidies. Controversial, misunderstood, and perhaps misused since its introduction, the 1933 bill introduced the idea of paying farmers not to grow crops, leading to urban legends then and now about farmers growing rich on acres of empty land. The country at the time faced a crop surplus that kept prices dangerously low. The 1933 act raised the value of crops by enforcing scarcity, meaning farmers could afford to stay in business, which was not only of macroeconomic benefit but also intercepted the possibility of real scarcities down the line, should enough farmers find other means of providing for their families. Millions of head of livestock and acres of cotton were destroyed to create this scarcity.

Consumers were more concerned with the microeconomic effects: the sudden increase in prices for food and cotton clothes. Most Americans opposed agricultural subsidies on these grounds and because of the counterintuitive head-scratching notion of “paying someone not to work.” In actuality, food prices did not go up very much—the principal effect was to prevent the decreases that had been forecast. Foreshadowing much of the agricultural legislation to come, large farms were the main beneficiaries of crop reduction subsidies because they could make substantial reductions while still having a significant amount of crop remaining. Smaller farms were more likely to go out of business, with their owners selling land to and taking jobs with these increasingly large farms, though this was certainly not solely caused by subsidies but rather was part of a general trend, exacerbated by the toll the Depression and the Dust Bowl took on small farms.

The original act was funded by a tax on agricultural goods, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1936 case United States v. Butler. The next farm bill, in 1938, funded subsidies from the general fund instead, and it went unchallenged. The 1938 act was essentially a refinement of the 1933 act, establishing ongoing research facilities to study farm needs, empowering the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fix market [Page 162]quotas and make available price supports for certain cash crops like tobacco and cotton, and integrating and renewing previous legislation. The 1948 farm bill modified these price supports somewhat.

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