Agricultural Price-Supporting Measures in Foreign Countries

Report Introduction: Government intervention for the purpose of enabling farmers to obtain higher and more dependable prices for their products has been an outstanding feature of the world agricultural situation in recent years. Historically speaking, such intervention is by no means a recent development; its lineage runs back far into the past. Such familiar devices as tariffs and bounties on agricultural and other products are centuries old. By 1914, moreover, there had been a considerable growth of other and more far-reaching types of activity, both private and governmental, involving systematic and organized efforts to enhance returns from the sale of farm products. Governments had been endeavoring increasingly to influence or control production, trade, and prices; and some progress had been made also in the field of cooperative organization of producers.