2 The authors are respectively research associate, assistant professor, and professor and director at the Agricultural and Food Policy Center, Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University. The authors wish to thank the individuals in USDA and the congressional staffers who provided access to the data utilized in this paper. Fred Woods, Chip Conley, Brenda Chewnig and Debbie Smith deserve special thanks.
3 For the benefit of the reader, we will refer to the two committees as either the House or Senate Agriculture Committee. Purists will note that the correct titles are the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
4 For simplicity, we are defining the South as the states of the former Confederacy (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee) plus Oklahoma and Kentucky. To accurately define the South as an agricultural region, West Texas should be excised, and parts of Missouri and West Virginia should be added.
5 This is a lesson from 1933 which could have been applied to the lump-sum payments under the 1996 farm bill. Landlords are perhaps as dominant today as they were in the 1930s.
6 It should, however, be clear that mechanization would have occurred regardless of the lucrative farm bill provisions. Attributing mechanization to farm policy would be a serious mistake.
7 The 1949 Act, along with the 1938 Act, the CCC Charter Act of 1948 and the 1954 Act (P.L. 480) are all considered "permanent legislation." Since subsequent farm bills have all had deadlines and merely amend provisions of previous legislation, if a new bill is not enacted before the expiration of the previous one, the permanent provisions come into effect. The antiquated provisions of the permanent legislation have compelled Congress to act before the deadline. The 1996 farm bill, up to the conference committee action, was to be made permanent legislation replacing the 1949 Act et al.
8Cochrane and Ryan write in 1976, "Perhaps the agricultural committees of the Congress could build a staff with sufficient skill and experience to draft effect legislation in the complex area of farm price and income legislation. But they have not. And they could do so now only with considerable effort and at considerable expense. Thus, the work of developing new program ideas and incorporating those ideas into legislation has devolved upon the research, legal, and administrative staffs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The secretary provides the policy guidance in the form of program goals and objectives, and his technical staffs construct the program features which can achieve those goals, or perhaps even tell the secretary that his goals are unattainable, given certain constrains (e.g., a budget limit)" (page 107). It is interesting to note that post-1970s, Congress did develop the staff and the role of USDA was subsequently diminished.
9 Cochrane and Ryan (1976) credit the following individuals in academia as having direct influence on policy: John D. Black, 1930s and 1940s; Walter W. Wilcox, 1950s and 1960s; Willard Cochrane, late-1950s and early 1960s; George E. Brandow, D. Gale Johnson, and John A. Schnittker, 1960s-1973; John Kenneth Galbraith, 1940-1965 (p. 119).
10 One of the authors, Knutson, was a staff economist and later, agency administrator, in USDA during the early 1970s. He notes the realization by Secretary Butz (Nixon Administration) that if he sent a bill to the Hill, it would be picked apart by a Democratic Congress. The beginning of the policy transition from USDA to the agriculture committees can be traced to the early 1970s.
11 Many interesting historical USDA data sets doubtlessly exist in storage or in out-of-print publications. As long-time staff members retire and the institutional memory is lost, so is part of our history.
12 In Knutson, Penn and Flinchbaugh (1997) it is noted that "Since the 1992 elections, a trend can be noted of increased dissatisfaction by members with the institution of Congress (members not seeking reelection) and increased accountability at the polls (incumbents being defeated). In the 1992 elections, 110 house seats and 11 senate seats changed hands. In the 1994 elections, 87 house seats and 9 senate seats changed hands. In the 1996 elections, 74 house seats and 15 senate seats changed hands. Consequently, in 1997, 16 of the 50 members of the House Agriculture Committee were freshmen and 38 had begun their service since 1992. Only 5 members were present when the previous farm bill was debated and passed in 1989. Only two members of the minority and not a single member of the majority were present when President Carter imposed the most recent embargo on agricultural exports in 1980" (p. 46).