Current Issues in Agricultural Economics: Introduction and Overview

Abstract

The post-war period of the 1950s and 1960s was a comparatively stable one in terms of agricultural policy. It was a time of reconstruction based on the agricultural price support measures put in place by the developed countries in the 1930s during the Great Depression. International trade in agriculture was influenced by the colonial structures still in place over much of the third world, the first and second worlds were locked by the cold war into mutual trade isolation, and the USA’s overwhelming economic power led to policies whereby it effectively stabilised international grain and many other markets besides.