There are fifteen titles in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (known as the 2008 Farm Bill). Our focus is the conservation title, Title II, which has seven main conservation programs: the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Farmland Protection Program (FPP), and the Grassland Reserve Program (GRP). All of these programs are continuations of programs from the 2002 Farm Bill or earlier. These conservation programs are of three basic policy types: land retirement programs that remove lands from agricultural production, working lands programs that encourage environmentally appropriate production practices, and agricultural preservation programs that focus on the nonagricultural socially desirable aspects of relatively low intensity agricultural land uses.

Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 : comparison of 2002 and 2008 conservation programs

The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act provides for three different types of payments to agricultural producers and landowners: direct, counter-cyclical and loan deficiency payments. Eligiable recipients will have the opportunity to update their acreage bases and programs yields under a new set of rules.

Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002: Commodity Programs for Crops

New crop insurance coverage offered by the 2014 Farm Bill will be available to cotton farmers beginning in 2015. Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) and Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) are new crop insurance options, which are designed to protect farmers from shallow losses. STAX is only available for upland cotton producers, while SCO is available for all major farm program crops. The objective of this project is to assess the benefits of the new crop insurance offerings for cotton producers in the Texas High Plains. Representative dry land and mixed, irrigated and dry land farms were developed using consensus evaluations of panels of producers in two distinct areas of the High Plains. Our simulation analysis examined producer welfare benefits of alternative combinations of underlying yield or revenue insurance coverage and STAX or SCO. The results suggest that Revenue Protection combined with STAX is the optimal insurance selection for both risk neutral and risk averse producers.

Evaluation of Crop Insurance Choices for Cotton Producers under the 2014 Farm Bill

Under the January 2007 Baseline, 20 of the 64 crop farms are considered in good liquidity condition (less than a 25 percent chance of negative ending cash in 2012). Five crop farms have between a 25 percent and a 50 percent likelihood of negative ending cash. The remaining 39 crop farms have greater than a 50 percent chance of negative ending cash. Additionally, 30 of the 64 crop farms are considered in good equity position (less than a 25 percent chance of decreasing real net worth during the study period). Nine crop farms have between a 25 percent and 50 percent likelihood of losing real net worth, and 25 crop farms have greater than a 50 percent probability of decreasing real net worth. The following discussion provides an overall evaluation by commodity considering both liquidity and equity measures.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49043/1/575008105.pdf

Representative Farms Economic Outlook for the January 2007 FAPRI/AFPC Baseline

Influence of rice production on subsequent cotton growth and yield.

The Agricultural Act of 2014, signed February 7, 2014, introduces a new era of federal support in the production of major agricultural commodities in the United States for the 2014 through 2018 crop years. The ultimate result of the Act was a 954-page piece of legislation that represented market-oriented policies such as the creation of an area-wide shallow loss revenue support program for covered commodities and a greater reliance on crop insurance products offered as a suite of risk management tools available to producers. The impact that this law has on agricultural producers in the Mississippi River delta region of the Mid-south is not yet fully known. Moving forward, the elimination of the direct payment program is likely to have an impact on farm income, as these payments were made annually and were decoupled from actual market prices. Various combinations of federal farm programs, chosen irrevocable, paired with multiple crop insurance products, that are purchased annually, will act to mitigate the risks of production. Simulation analysis provides a basis for evaluating the variability associated with production systems in the Mississippi River delta region. Three representative rice and soybean farms and six corn, cotton, and soybean farms were modeled as to determine the five year net returns resulting from price and yield risk as well as to evaluate alternative farm program and crop insurance selection. Financial performance of these farms is measured for varying levels of risk using a stochastic efficiency criteria. Results are presented for multiple combinations of the agriculture risk coverage and price loss coverage programs of the commodity title and revenue protection, supplemental coverage option endorsement, and the stacked income protection plan for producers of upland cotton contained in crop insurance title of the current farm law. For each farm at each location, an estimate to the net present value of the cumulative net returns above variable costs to the producer for the five year life of the farm bill is provided. Results from xi different farming operations suggest the preferred pairing of farm programs and crop insurance policies does vary across locale and crops.

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2053&context=gradschool_dissertations

Evaluating Commodity Farm Program Selection and Economic Return Variability on Representative Farms in the Mississippi River Delta Region Using a Risk Return Framework

Michael Anthony Deliberto

Papers

Evaluating Commodity Farm Program Selection and Economic Return Variability on Representative Farms in the Mississippi River Delta Region Using a Risk Return Framework