There was something called the Commodity Credit Corporation, which was a wholly owned government organization; still exists; sometimes called the CCC, which is a New Deal-sounding acronym, and it was. And that corporation, run by USDA, bought corn. Just went out and acquired corn, through a complicated loan process. They would loan money to a farmer at harvest time, or actually well before harvest, at planting time, based on a price guarantee at harvest. If the farmer decided not to sell or had a price below that loan rate, the farmer had the right to turn that corn over to the government. Which they did. And the government owned warehouses but they also contracted with private people who had warehouses. They did this--in the case of milk, the government didn't buy raw milk from the farm. They promised to buy cheese and butter and dry milk powder, so that we had, outside of Kansas City, caves full of government-owned cheese at one point. As well as piles and piles of dry milk powder.
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