Can a single program support farm income and encourage producers to adopt environmentally sound farming practices? While simple in concept, attempting to roll the farm income support features of existing commodity programs and conservation payments into a single program raises questions. Exactly...

We examine changes in land use caused by the large increase in crop insurance premium subsidies under the 1994 Federal Crop Insurance and Reform Act (FCIRA). We use a conditional logit model to estimate changes in six major land uses from 1992 and 1997 as a function of the change in expected...

In many OECD countries, including the U.S., interest in developing agri-environmental payment programs is currently strong. In the future, the inclusion of an agri-environmental payment program into the WTO's "green box" could be more easily challenged by WTO member countries on the basis that...

Federal programs may encourage farmers to convert native grasslands—land that has never been cultivated — to production of corn, soybeans, and other crops, leading to potential losses of Northern Plains' native grasslands. Federally subsidized crop insurance reduces risk associated...

Subsidized crop insurance may encourage conversion of native grassland to cropland. The Sodsaver provision of the 2008 farm bill could deny crop insurance on converted land in the Prairie Pothole states for 5 years. Supplemental Revenue Assistance payments, which are linked to crop insurance...

The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resulted from a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies, provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in response to increased demand for corn. As some...