Farmers increasingly look to supply management to steady U.S. agriculture

With a trade war looming, commodity prices swooning, and the dairy industry in full-blown crisis, a growing number of American farmers are embracing a controversial set of farm policies that would manage the country’s commodity production and stabilize crop prices. The policies, known as supply management, governed U.S. agriculture for decades but were abandoned in the late 20th century as large-scale monocropping and commodity exports came to define farm policy. “Just in the last few months, people are paying attention to it,” says writer and National Family Farm Coalition consultant Siena Chrisman of supply management policy. In prior farm policy debates, she says, “nobody ever wanted to hear about it, nobody cared, nobody knew what it was.” But in the lead-up to the next farm bill, and particularly in light of devastatingly low milk prices, she says, farmers are considering supply management with renewed interest.