U.S. domestic farm Prices were set above market clearing levels during much of the 1950's and 1960's. Initially, market prices were sustained by the government acquiring the difference between the quantity supplied and the quantity demanded at the prevailing prices and adding it to public stocks - stocks which provided a relatively high degree of stability to U.S. and world markets in this period. Later (starting in 1956), supply was brought into balance with demand at the prevailing price ratios by removing land from production. Stocks in government hands, which reached a peak of $6.4 billion in 1959, were worked down to slightly over $1 billion in 1967 and 1968, and again in 1971.