Are you so young that you don't remember the 50's and early 60's?  We had government corn out the tail end.  It was stored everywhere.  We had a loan program and that was about all.  Everybody grew corn for the government loan.  That was what determined the price.  Then our competitors started competing.  They grew corn and sold it on the world markets just a little less than us.  We took acres out of production because the corn was piling up.  Our competitors just grew more to compensate for what we took out of production and sold it on the world market just a little less than we, and they did so by subsidizing their exports.  We still had the loan so we farmers could guarantee ourselves a price and produced more and more.  It piled up more and more.  Finally along came the LDP so the corn moved to market no matter how low the price.  That began to hurt the foreign competition.  It cost a lot for them to subsidize their exports now.  Things started to turn around, slowly but they did turn.  I don't think I want to go there again!

Oh, yes, do you remember the reserve program?  I don't even want to talk about that!  And the PIK certificates, what a mess.  I never had writer's cramp so badly in my life.