U. S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND THE FEDERAL AND STATE COMMODITY CHECK-OFF PROGRAMS

GARRY LAWRENCE FRANK, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract

For most of the past forty years, U.S. food and fiber production has operated under the philosophy that the domestic demand for agricultural commodities is inelastic. In short, U.S. agriculture's capacity to produce far outstripped the human stomach's capacity to absorb all of it's output. As a result, it became necessary for the federal government to manage an increasing oversupply of food and fiber. The economic rationale behind the need for government action to manage this supply was that those who produced this resource were an independent group who had no incentive to voluntarily pull together to manage this oversupply. The bulk of federal agricultural policies was designed to manage this oversupply by organizing agricultural producers into a collective economic organization. From a political perspective, this rationale created a political decision-making network which was dominated exclusively by agricultural interests. Over the past decade, U.S. agriculture has witnessed a transition in the move toward a market philosophy characterized by demand expansion activities (i.e., commodity promotion) rather than reliance on traditional supply management regulations. This dissertation seeks to analyze an important agricultural policy question with respect to this transition. The research question that is addressed is: Does a market philosophy necessitate that the "coercive" powers of government be used to instill a collective economic framework for agricultural producers similar to that which existed under a supply management approach? This dissertation reveals that demand expansion activities associated with a market philosophy create a need to utilize the "coercive" authority of government to achieve "collectivism" amongst agricultural producers. This need for government action is reflected in the development and growth of federal and state legislated commodity check-off programs over the past two decades. Commodity check-offs are a "special" assessment (e.g., tax) levied primarily on the producers of specific agricultural commodities by agricultural interest groups in order to generate revenues to promote specific commodities. Chapter 1 of this dissertation develops the basic political and economic framework surrounding U.S. agriculture. Chapter 2 outlines the significance of the impact of an agricultural market philosophy on the inherent competitiveness between agricultural commodities which necessitates that commodity interest groups advertise and promote their commodities. Chapter 3 provides a detailed analysis of the commodity check-off approach as a way of "coercing" agricultural producers to contribute to commodity promotion efforts. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the numerous commodity check-off programs operating at the federal and state levels. Finally, Chapter 6 analyzes the political significance and the economic impact of commodity check-off programs. The data base for this dissertation was developed between February 1979 and June 1980. A national survey of all of the state departments of agriculture was utilized to identify the number of check-off programs within each state and 250 unstructured telephone interviews were conducted with state departments of agriculture officials and leaders of appropriate state commodity interest groups. This data is presented in Appendix B. For the federally enacted programs, a total of 32 unstructured personal interviews were conducted with U.S. Department of Agriculture officials and several Washington, D.C.-based commodity organizations and general farm organizations. This data is presented in detail in Appendix A.

Subject Area

Political science

Recommended Citation

FRANK, GARRY LAWRENCE, "U. S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND THE FEDERAL AND STATE COMMODITY CHECK-OFF PROGRAMS" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8111677.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8111677

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