When the Agriculture Committees and their staff begin working on a farm bill, like clockwork, experts from around the country, including us, put out information intended to help inform the process. Every farm bill cycle, we run across a report or research geared toward the next farm bill that, while what the authors did and said isn’t technically wrong, boy does it leave out something kind of important…hence the term “Silly Season.”
The article that caught our eye this time is titled “State Shares of US Commodity Program Payments: 2002–2021” by Zulauf, et al., written for farmdoc.[1] The authors summarize their paper with the following:
“Payments are compared to the value of all field crop production. One would expect payments to be proportional to value of production. In general, commodity payments follow farm production, but exceptions exist. States whose share of commodity payments are higher (lower) than their share of field crop production tend to be in the South (Midwest).” [READ MORE]