The act was the first to make price support mandatory for corn, cotton, and wheat to help maintain a sufficient supply in low production periods along with marketing quotas to keep supply in line with market demand.
There's massive government interference in agricultural markets because the free market flat-out doesn't work in that industry. Farmers plant in the spring but sell their crops in the fall, so in a free market they have to guess what the fall price of different crops will be and hope they get lucky. If they aren't lucky -- if you grow a bunch of corn but the price of corn bottoms out because everyone in your state grew a ton of corn, too -- you either make almost no profit, or you might even figure that the price is so low that harvesting isn't worth the cost.
Or how the U.S. effectively removed agricultural production from the free market a century ago.
Can you elaborate a bit? Or point me to a source?
Here's a good starting point:
There's massive government interference in agricultural markets because the free market flat-out doesn't work in that industry. Farmers plant in the spring but sell their crops in the fall, so in a free market they have to guess what the fall price of different crops will be and hope they get lucky. If they aren't lucky -- if you grow a bunch of corn but the price of corn bottoms out because everyone in your state grew a ton of corn, too -- you either make almost no profit, or you might even figure that the price is so low that harvesting isn't worth the cost.