Agriculture and the State Market Processes and Bureaucracy

Here is an irreverent, insightful view of farm programs in the United States, clearly separating political rhetoric from economic reality.

Analyzing the effects of price supports, marketing orders, credit and export subsidies, and other farm programs, professor Pasour shows how they especially hurt the small farmer and victimize the general public. He also exposes current farm policies as being responsible for high food prices and the widening destruction of the environment. This book sets forth how only through abolishing the gravy train of farm subsidies and other special privileges will American consumers find relief and American agriculture achieve significant economic progress.

Despite record expenditures, government farming programs have not solved the farm problem. However, farm programs still command powerful political support. This book is a hard-hitting analysis of how farm programs have mainly benefitted large corporate farming interests at the expense of small farmers and the general public.

E. C. Pasour, Jr., is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Agriculture and the State: Market Processes and Bureaucracy and has contributed to numerous books including Agriculture and Energy (W. Lockeretz, ed.), and Economy, Society and Public Policy (C. Pope and L. Wimmer, eds.).

Bruce L. Gardner (1942–2008), a graduate of the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, was Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park and Interim Dean, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland. He was a Senior Staff Economist on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisors and Assistant Secretary for Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture.