AEI’s Vincent Smith outlines some of the staggering amounts of cash the government pays to farmers, including $16 billion to $17 billion per year on average for farmers to buy crop insurance, while crop insurance companies get $2 billion to $3 billion on top of that. Subsidies to farmers average $7 billion per year while
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Farm bill briefing on Capitol Hill
As the House prepares to take up the farm bill this month, crop insurance and shallow-loss programs promise to be the subject of much debate. Though the House and Senate bills would discontinue the Direct Payments Program, each would continue overly generous crop insurance coverage and subsidies and institute new revenue protection programs for farmers.
Fake savings: The 2013 House farm bill
The House agriculture committee passed its version of the 2013 farm bill on May 15. Like the Senate agriculture committee, the House agriculture committee is selling its bill as a bipartisan deficit-reduction measure that saves tax payer dollars on farm subsidy spending while introducing new programs to improve risk management for farmers. As the bill
A new bait and switch farm bill
The Senate agriculture committee passed its version of the 2013 farm bill on May 14. Though sold as a deficit-reduction measure that maintains key supports for farmers, the bill’s numbers deserve a closer look as it heads to the Senate floor next week. The new bill does get one thing right: eliminating the Direct Payments
How to get food aid right
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on CNN Global Public Square. Christopher B. Barrett is a professor at Cornell University and author of an American Enterprise Institute paper on US food assistance programs and the book Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. The views expressed are his own. How many of us read
More subsidies for prosperous farmers
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that farm income in 2013 will be more than double what it was in 2009. The nation’s farmers are enjoying the benefits of high crop prices, massive crop insurance subsidies, and technological advances that have made crops more resistant to drought. As a result, farming’s record level of income
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It’s time to ask farmers to pay more for crop insurance
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Roll Call. When somebody else pays for their drinks, most partygoers find they want and need more than a modest amount to drink because at an open bar, the cost of a drink is the time spent waiting in line for service. At a cash bar, lines are
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‘The world’s most outdated law’: Why the next farm bill should be the last
Editor’s note: “‘The world’s most outdated law’: Why the next farm bill should be the last” by Daniel A. Sumner originally appeared in The Atlantic. Daniel A. Sumner is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor to AEI’s American Boondoggle project. When Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan recently referred to the
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Ignoring trade commitments and trade relations only hurts our credibility
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in The Hill. For many years, a persistent theme in House and Senate Agricultural Committee debates over farm policy has been “Give the farm lobbies the subsidy programs they want and the heck with the consequences for U.S. trade relations.” Nothing reflects that attitude better than the recent history
Moving towards a more rational farm policy: A real opportunity for bipartisan collaboration
A remarkable thing has happened on the way to a 2013 Farm Bill. Senator Harry Reid and Senator Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee, along with other Democrats on the committee, have recently proposed a sequestration related Farm Bill. The Bill would terminate the $5 billion a year Direct Payments program, which has
