US gov sets sugar price..not free market?

I heard a story on NPR this morn about how the candy manufacturers are leaving the US because they arnt allowed by the government to buy sugar at the world market price. I was under the impression we didnt do this sort of thing in our country. What happened to the so called "free market"? Why can the government set the price for sugar but not for gas; a recourse everyone needs.

Its because no one cares about agriculture - its perceived as boring and thus the only people who pay any attention to the laws congress enacts are the people with a serious motivation to set those laws. Same problem with social services - the only people who care about how the social safety network actually works are the people directly involved with it, and like farmers, they tend to be very busy doing there own thing and too poor to hire lobbyists. It seems to me like this problem stems from federalism - price points for this sort of product should be determined based on the local needs and local economy and above all by the market not who pays the most to political campaigns. But we need a system that makes sure issues that dont interest the public or make headlines dont get swamped by ones that do.

This is just one problem with the agri-bill that no one is paying attention to. We still are subsidizing the mega farms who dont need it and paying farmers to grow certain crops which arnt useful for feeding people.