Politically portrayed as valiant family farms scratching out a living in the Jeffersonian mode, agriculture is instead the most regulated and subsidized sector of the industrial economy, deeply intertwined in environmental policies. Agricultural Policy and the Environment pulls back the wrappings that cloak U.S. agriculture and explains how and why politics has affected the traditional stewardship role played by agriculture. The stories about why this has happened are as important to understanding policy outcomes today as the stories that explain how it has evolved.