Abstract
Farmers are price takers and there is a natural distrust of merchants and middlemen in the agricultural community. Farmers look to the government to level the economic playing field. This chapter examines the development of market regulation starting with the Granger laws and regulation of railroads through the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts and the Federal Trade Commission Act. It also reviews the direct regulation of agricultural markets by the Packers and Stockyards Act and the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. The Capper-Volstead Act and the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 gave farmers the power to act collectively.
We are not enemies to capital, but we oppose the tyranny of monopolies.
—1874 Declaration of Purposes of the National Grange
We must dispense with a surplus of middlemen, not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions diminish our profits.
—1874 Declaration of Purposes of the National Grange
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Notes
- 1.
These laws were sponsored by The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, a fraternal organization of farmers that rose to prominence in the last half of the nineteenth century. In addition to these market regulatory laws, the Grange promoted cooperatives and a national system of farm credit.
- 2.
94 US 113 (1877).
- 3.
118 US 557 (1886).
- 4.
The Department of Commerce and Labor was established in statute in February 1903. In 1913, the Department was split into two separate government agencies.
- 5.
Wheeler Lea Act (P.L. 75-447), McGuire Act (66 Stat. 631 (1938)), the Alaska Pipeline Act (P.L. 94-145), Magnuson-Moss Warranty – FTC Improvement Act (P.L. 93-637), Federal Trade Commission Improvements Act (P.L. 96-252), Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (P.L. 97-290), Federal Trade Commission Act Amendment (P.L. 96-252), Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (P.L. 111-203).
- 6.
Morris was later acquired by Armour.
- 7.
362 US 458 (1960).
- 8.
135 S.Ct. 2419 (2015).
- 9.
Landschaft can be translated to landscape in English.
- 10.
Since 1985, the Farm Credit Board has consisted of three members, all of them nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They serve six-year terms.
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Mercier, S.A., Halbrook, S.A. (2020). Bringing Equity to Agricultural Input and Output Markets. In: Agricultural Policy of the United States. Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36452-6_10
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