Agricultural Policy as a Social Engineering Tool

National policies are generally made to reflect the interests of the citizens of the
countries where they are instituted. In Japan, prewar agricultural policies were aimed at
freeing tenant farm operators from poverty and the harsh landlord system. These farm
operators were considered economically and socially vulnerable and therefore the
government agricultural polices were meant to address both economic and social
problems. Houck (1986) argues that bitter memories of food shortages during and after
World Wars I and II give several European countries and Japan an incentive to subsidize
their farm sectors and thereby keep them much larger that they should otherwise be. In
Canada, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) was developed between the 1920s and 1940s
when wheat was an essential part of Canada’s national policy. Although wheat revenue
has declined from 78% to less than 40% between 1950 and 2002, the CWB continues to
play an important role in Canada’s agricultural policy. The U.S. has challenged the CWB
with unfair trade practices approximately 14 times for different reasons and through
different avenues (Furtan, 2005).

Bitter memories over the Bay of Pigs invasion have forced the U.S. to maintain a
four-decade old embargo against Cuba. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) finds it
“perplexing” to have a cold war policy that hinders U.S. farm exports when farm
operators and food processors are facing economic difficulties (quoted in the Star Ledger,
2005). U.S. farm operators lose $1.24 billion each year due to the embargo and lifting
the sanctions would generate an additional $1.6 billion in U.S. GDP, $2.8 billion in sales
and 31,260 jobs (Maness, 2003). Yet at the same time that such restrictions are in place,
the U.S., provides $141 million to 70 U.S. Trade Organizations for the promotion of U.S.
agricultural products overseas (www.fas.usda.gov).

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