over the last two years to define and devise comprehensive national food strategy. In this yet-to-be-completed endeavor, two matters have been evident: (a) the enhancement of stability in the food system has emerged as a priority task of public policy and, (b) there has been growing uncertainty about the role of agricultural marketing boards. The two are interrelated because marketing boards are viewed as institutions potentially suited to furthering stability in the food system, and, by extension, in the broader economy. Stabilization has long been a dominant theme of Canadian agricultural policy. Successive Canadian governments have approached the sustained transfer of income to farmers-the major objective of farm policies in most developed countries-with caution and moderation. Instead, a major purpose of Canadian agricultural policy has been to attenuate unplanned fluctuations in farm output, commodity prices, and farmers' incomes, and to transfer to the public sector a part of the private costs of such variation. The unprecedented turbulence in world and national commodity markets witnessed during this decade has validated the stabilization thrust of Canadian farm policy, and has motivated a deepening of the commitment to the stability objective. The approach to stabilizing the food sector has been multidimensional. However, primary reliance has been placed on four programs. Stability in the dairy sector is achieved by a unique and complex set of programs involving market control, administered pricing, direct subsidies, and regulation of trade. Second, the Agricultural Stabilization Act provides floor prices (adjusted for changes in cash costs) for a wide range of crop and livestock products. Third, the Western Grain Stabilization Act gua antees that the net cash flow (gross receipts less cash costs) of grain growers in the Prairie region will not fall in the current year below the average of the previous five years. Fourth, and most pertinent to this paper, there are the market control plans operated by a variety of national and provincial agencies. This set of programs has three features in common: (a) the programs are directed at the farming component of the food system; (b) they are designed to reduce variation in the prices (or gross margins) of commodities on an industry-wide basis; and (c) they are asymmetric insofar as they are concerned predominantly to limit only down-side market price fluctuations. A distinguishing feature of institutional arrangements in the Canadian food system, and of Canada's farm and food policy, is the extent to which the first-stage marketing of farm products is controlled by mandatory agencies. Furthermore, the direction of development of public policy has been toward the extension of mandatory centralized marketing. The number of marketing boards and their share of farm cash receipts has risen from 66 and 13% in 1958 to 100 and 60% at the present time (Agriculture Canada). National agencies have een created to coordinate the activities of provincial marketing boards for some commodities. And some boards have been granted additional powers that strengthen their influence on commodity markets. The objectives that farmers pursue through their marketing boards are income stability, Larry J. Martin and T. K. Warley are, respectively, associate professor and professor, School of Agricultural Economics and Extension Education, University of Guelph. The authors were assisted in the empirical analysis by Michael Farrow and Carolyn Scott. An expanded version of the paper is available from the authors.