This research investigates the potential effects of the row crop provisions of the standing disaster assistance program (SURE) in the 2008 Farm Bill. Results suggest little impact on producer crop insurance purchase decisions, though the program does seem to provide an incentive for mid-level...

Producers’ increased reliance on crop insurance has led to concerns about losses producers could incur that are not covered by crop insurance. In the current farm bill debate, several proposals that would be based on area (county) revenue and are intended to cover a portion of producers’...

The US crop insurance program previously used a simple average of equally weighted historical loss cost data to serve as the backbone for estimating crop insurance premium rates. This article develops a procedure for weighting the historical loss cost experience based on longer time-series...

This paper employs a cost function analysis method to investigate the existence of moral hazard in cotton buy-up insurance. The trans-log cost function estimates of the own-price elasticity of fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide is -0.222, -0.143, and -0.121, respectively for Mississippi...

Economies of scale are investigated and the impacts of farm payment limitations for producers of cotton and soybeans in Mississippi are evaluated. Limits proposed by the Senate following the recent farm bill debate are overlaid on estimates of the scale economies for the cost of producing these...

Revenue variability at different levels of aggregation has been the focus of several proposals to reform U.S. commodity programs with the 2007 farm bill. In this paper, we estimate revenue variabilityyear-to-year deviations from expected revenuefor corn, soybeans, and cotton at four levels of...

The term "cheap food policy" has frequently been used as a descriptor for U.S. commodity programs by those who contend these payments to farmers ultimately result in lower food costs for consumers. More recently, farm policy has been criticized for contributing to the obesity problem in the U.S....

Introduction: The context of row crop risk management continues to grow more complex. While the magnitude of price and yield risk changes over time, the development of sophisticated risk management tools and complex government policies may improve growers’ ability to manage risk -- if these...