Issues Involved in Formulating A Structures Policy for U.S. Agriculture

On March 12, 1979, Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland issued a call for a full-scale national dialogue on the structure of American agriculture. According to USDA, “Reaction to the speech has been widespread and, in the main, highly positive.†The main factor contributing to this “widespread highly positive†response has been the ambiguity of the subject matter. Farmers, along with special interest groups of all types and persuasions, have eagerly jumped on the structures bandwagon to blame/praise one or more particular aspects of agricultural structure for all the evils/blessings currently within their fields of vision. This broad range of comments and opinions on structure can be attributed to the extreme extent to which the structure of agriculture pervades and is interwoven with the national economy and society in general. Unfortunately, some unreasonable expectations apparently have also emerged concerning which of agriculture's ills can be alleviated via a structures policy. The aim of this article is to attempt to give some perspective to the structures issue.