The U.S. National Weather Service says that the nation has just experienced the wettest 12 months in the 124 years of the agency’s recordkeeping. Last month was the wettest May on record and the second wettest of all recorded months since 1895. As a result, a wide swath of land is unable to be planted to the principle crop of corn. What is being sown is confusion, much of it with its basis in government policy.

The 1996 Farm Bill is known informally as the “Freedom to Farm Act.” For the first time, the government made direct payments to farmers regardless of what seeds they put into the ground. The concept lost support within two years as weather and the Asian financial crisis wreaked havoc, and the fixed payments prove...