We cannot entirely blame the weather for spiraling grain prices, agricultural experts caution. Federal programs which continue to require tens of millions of acres of farmland to lie fallow are also responsible for the grain shortage, as well as the flood of beef which has come to market -- as a result of the higher grain prices -- and driven meat prices down.

• This year the federal Conservation Reserve Program is paying farmers to leave 36 million acres of farmland idle, though most of it could be farmed with no major environmental harm.

• This acreage -- mostly corn and wheat fields -- composes about 10 percent of American crop land.

• Usually, the payments to farmers are equivalent to double or triple the local rental rate for the land.

• Also, with high demand for grain on world markets, this unplowed land represents a loss of billions in international trade at a time when politicians decry the size of the trade deficit.

President Clinton and Congress had a chance this year to end this self-defeating system when they passed the new farm bill . But politics-as-usual and farm votes won out, and the Conservation Reserve Program was renewed. The administration also had the option of making it easy for farmers to withdraw early from the program if crop prices were high enough to encourage planting, as they are now. Instead, it issued regulations so tangled that most farmers chose to stick with their current commitments.

Adding to the problem, the administration last year continued to spend lavishly on export subsidies, using tax dollars to underwrite foreign grain buyers, who wound up getting U. S. wheat at fire sale prices.

Moreover, despite signs of a potential shortfall in corn reserves, the administration last year required corn growers participating in support programs to leave five million acres idle. Since then, corn prices have more than doubled.

According to some agricultural specialists, the administration's farm policy seems to be to minimize harvests in order to maximize prices.