For most economic goods market participants are ‘not forced to make a deal.’ They can walk away, perhaps permanently, or revisit a transaction later if the terms of trade are more to their liking. That is not the case for food. It is a biological necessity to participate in the food market. This coercive property of food demand and other unique market characteristics make the agricultural sector very unresponsive to changes in price and hence—in contrast to textbook expectations—its ability to quickly self-correct. In recent decades agricultural policy legislation has not taken into account the root causes of agriculture's chronic price and income problems. As a result, it has been largely ineffective and unnecessarily expensive. We argue in this paper that a well-designed supply management program can take agriculture's unique characteristics into account in a way that benefits farmers, consumers and the public as a whole.
