Implications for Agronomists under Demand Enhancement Policies

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Abstract
American agriculture has traditionally experienced prolonged periods of excess production and rising stocks of program commodities. The federal government's response to these conditions in the 1980s has been to spend record amounts of taxpayer dollars in an effort to control production. Such supply control policies have proven to be not only expensive and difficult to manage in an era of rapid worldwide technological change, but they have had a perverse effect upon backwardly linked farm input supply sectors and the level of economic activity in rural communities. This paper discusses the implications of demand enhancement policies as an alternative to supply control policies for agronomists as well as U.S. crop producers, livestock producers, domestic consumers, foreign trade, input manufacturing firms, the environment, and the federal government budget deficit. The paper concludes by discussing the relative merits of alternative policy choices for the long run.

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