U.S. sugar policy is widely criticized. However, it continues to be approved by Congress. A key explanation for this seeming contradiction is how political campaigns are financed.

Retiring land from crop production under the Conservation Reserve Program is expensive and often unnecessary. Instead, more emphasis should be placed on providing incentives for farmers to reduce erosion by adopting better cropping practices. This would cost less than current programs and allow...

"Program" yields for individual farmers are utilized in determining the amount of deficiency payments individual farmers receive. They have been frozen since the 1985 Food Security Act (FSA). However, some farm groups are pressing for unfreezing these yields so that actual yields could be...