Financial Assistance to Minnesota Farmers: Public Programs and Policy Issues

[Supporting Material for “A Bounds Analysis of World Food Futures: Global Agriculture Through to 2050.” Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 2014 (forthcoming)]

The 1996 Fair Act authorized two types of income support payments for the major commodities, fixed decoupled payments, and marketing assistance loans. These provided a lower safety net for commodity programs than was political acceptable, and Congress passed emergency legislation providing...

With the current federal farm bill set to expire at the end of September this year, many proposals have been made to redesign the next bill. The objectives of this study are to compare the current policy with major proposed alternatives and estimate the potential payments of farmers under each...

This paper examines the impact of deficit reductions on agricultural price support spending, and proposes several policy innovations designed to remove agricultural programs from the entitlement category. First, agricultural program costs are analyzed in relation to deficit reduction...