Whole farm safety net programs: an emerging US farm policy evolution?

The 2018 farm bill is the latest in a history that dates to 1933. Commodity assistance is the only program in all farm bills, but with evolutionary changes. Current farm commodity programs largely make payments to farms, a stark contrast to the 1930s when they limited supply, put a floor under market price, and dampened price increases via public stocks. Crop insurance, which began as an experimental pilot program in 1938, now has its own farm bill title. Almost all commodity and insurance programs have provided assistance based on a calculation specific to an individual commodity's price and/or yield. However, an evolutionary change to whole farm commodity programs may be in its infant stages. They provide assistance for variation in a farm's aggregate revenue across multiple crops. Whole farm experiments currently exist in both the commodity and crop insurance titles. Analysis of a whole farm commodity program finds that its payments differ by year from actual payments made by current commodity programs and are smaller in total.

Implications of Commodity Programs and Crop Insurance Policies for Wheat Producers

We analyze the effects of Price Loss Coverage (PLC), Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC), individual revenue protection insurance (RP), and Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) on the RP coverage level, certainty equivalent, and program payments. The model is calibrated to a representative wheat farm in Mitchell County in Kansas to analyze the effects of various policies. The result highlights that when insurance is framed as an investment, cumulative prospect theory predicts farmers’ coverage decisions accurately at 70%. ARC or PLC program increases the RP coverage level to 75%, but PLC and SCO jointly decrease the RP coverage level to 70%.

Lessons Learned in the Southern Region after the First Year of Implementation of the New Commodity Programs

The development of the commodity programs in the 2008 Farm Bill involved the origination of two complex revenue support initiatives. The two new programs, Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) and Supplemental Revenue Assurance (SURE), expanded the risk management tool kit of agricultural producers. The SURE program is a permanent disaster assistance program, whereas the ACRE program is a revenue-based commodity program offered as an alternative to the price-based Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program (DCP) created in the 2002 Farm Bill. For the 2009 signup, only 7.7% of eligible U.S. farms enrolled in the ACRE program. In the southern region, three states had no farms electing ACRE and four others had less than 50. Excluding Oklahoma, less than 1% of all farms in 13 southern states made the ACRE election.

Implications of Integrated Commodity Programs and Crop Insurance

Moving from price-triggered to area revenue–triggered programs was perhaps the most common theme among 2007 farm bill proposals. Area revenue–triggered commodity programs may make farm-level revenue insurance products seem redundant, raising questions about why the federal government should continue both programs. Area revenue–triggered programs would remove much of the systemic risk faced by producers. As a result, private sector insurers may be able to insure the residual risk without federal involvement. This paper examines the effects of moving to area revenue–triggered commodity programs with a focus on public policy issues that would likely arise.