Economic Impact of a Proposed AGI Means Test on Representative Crop Farms

The Administration has proposed revising the AGI means test for eligibility to farm program payments. The 2002 farm bill excludes producers from farm program payments (CCP, DP, and MLG/LDP) if their average adjusted gross income (AGI) for three preceding years exceeds $2.5 million and less than 75$200,000 and repeal the 75% exclusion. The purpose of this report is to estimate the impacts of the AGI proposal on average annual government payments and real net worth in 2014 for representative crop farms. The AFPC maintains a data base of 64 representative commercial family farms in major production regions across the United States. The farms represent a full-time, commercial operation that is typical of farms in a particular area. The farmers who participate in the bi-annual farm update interviews are selected by the county agent based on farm size (typical for the area), crop mix and farming practices (typical for the area), and being full-time farmers (not employed off the farm). The farms were constructed with no off-farm income to illustrate the changes in wellbeing due to farm policy changes. To the extent that a farm has off-farm income, the results will be conservative.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Economic Feasibility of Commercial Algae Oil Production in the United States

A Monte Carlo simulation model was constructed to analyze the economic feasibility of growing algae as a renewable fuel source. Increasing growth rates, pond water depth, oil content, and facility size are important for ensuring the economic viability of a commercial algae facility.algae, renewable, fuel, feedstock, microalgae, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

The Farm Level Impacts of Operating the Current Farm Bill at Reduced Federal Budget Spending Levels

Agricultural and Food Policy,

The Farm Level Impacts of Replacing Current Farm Programs with a Whole Farm Revenue Program

This study evaluates the farm level economic impacts of implementing a whole farm revenue insurance program in lieu of current government program payments on agricultural producers in major production areas of the United States. Realizing a multitude of viable options exist, this study demonstrates one way a whole farm revenue coverage program could work at the farm level and makes comparisons between the current baseline situation and alternative levels of revenue coverage implementation.agricultural policy, simulation, representative farms, government payments, crop insurance, revenue coverage, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Investigating the Redundancies in Current Farm Programs

Farm Programs, Agricultural and Food Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

The Impact of Increased Planting Flexibility on Planting Decisions Across Texas

Increased acreage planting flexibility granted through the last three farm bills has allowed agricultural producers to make production choices without government programs driving their decisions. Planted acre data for program crops in seven Texas regions is used to describe response to varying degrees of flexibility granted through decoupled payments.Crop Production/Industries,

Impacts of Budget Reconciliation on U.S. Crop Producers

The President has called for a $6.96 billion savings in expenditures to agriculture over a five year period. A budget reconciliation is required to achieve these targeted savings from farm bill authorized expenditures. This study uses optimal control theory and farm level simulation to quantify the impacts on U.S. crop producers of reducing federal spending for agricultural income supports. Results indicate that the least harmful method for the Agricultural Committees to achieve budget savings of$3 billion is to reduce loan rates. At higher levels of net budget savings, some risk adverse decision makers would prefer that the Committees reduce target prices.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Farm Level Impacts of a Revenue Based Policy in the 2007 Farm Bill

Revenue-based policy alternatives are thought to be a potential component of the 2007 Farm Bill. This research provides an economic analysis of switching to a revenue assurance farm program for representative farms. Specifically, this research provides a monte-carlo stochastic simulation model that compares the effect of a revenue based safety net policy relative to continuing the 2002 Farm Bill policies for different types of U.S. crop farmers. The results show that both revenue assurance proposals by the National Corn Growers Association leave the majority of farmers, especially feed grain producers, with higher total receipts and higher government payments.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Economic Outlook for Representative Cotton Farms Given the August 2006 FAPRI/AFPC Baseline

The majority of the cotton farms are in poor overall financial condition under the August 2006 Baseline. Drought conditions this year will deplete cash built from more favorable yields in 2004 and 2005 in many cases. In addition, the poor financial performance of the farms is attributed in part to the large increase in input prices. Fuel costs, previously projected to decrease modestly in 2005 and 2006, are now more accurately depicted as significant increases, building further on the large increases experienced in 2003 and 2004. The increase in cost is not limited to fuel expense for trucks, equipment, and irrigation motors, but includes the cost of nitrogen fertilizer and ag-related services which are closely linked to energy prices. Many cotton producers have adopted genetically modified seed and more expensive conventional varieties in order to enhance efficiencies and achieve higher yields; however, the tradeoff for these gains is increased cost of seed and technology fees. Steel prices have skyrocketed, thus increasing the cost of machinery along with the cost of repairing existing machinery. To keep quality employees on the farm, producers are faced with rising wage pressure from competing industries. The bottom line is producers are threatened by the rising cost of doing business while modest projected increases in cotton and other commodity prices fail to outpace these inflationary pressures.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Benefits and challenges of applying Semantic Web Services in the e-Government domain

Joining up services in e-Government usually implies governmental agencies acting in concert without a central control regime. This requires the sharing of scattered and heterogeneous data. Semantic Web Service (SWS) technology can help to integrate, mediate and reason between these datasets. However, since few real-world applications have been developed, it is still unclear which are the actual benefits and issues of adopting such a technology in the e-Government domain. In this paper, we contribute to raising awareness of the potential benefits in the e-Government community by analyzing motivations, requirements, and expected results, before proposing a reusable SWS-based framework. We demonstrate the application of this framework by a compelling use case: a GIS-based emergency planning system. We illustrate the obtained benefits and the key challenges which remain to be addressed