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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Instability and Risk as Rationales for Farm Programs -- Reaction -- 2. Storage, Stability, and Farm Programs -- Reaction -- 3. An Analysis of Alternative Market and Governmental Risk Transference Mechanisms -- Reaction -- 4. Stability and Farm Programs: A Case Study of Feed Grain Markets -- Reaction -- 5. Stability and the Tobacco Program -- Reaction -- 6. Stability Issues and Policy Analysis -- 7. Panel Discussion: Summary and Reactions -- List of Symposium Participants.

"Targeting" in the agricultural policy context generally means directing payments to small or financially vulnerable farms or to poor farm families. This may seem a worthy objective. If farm programs were designed to act as welfare, then focusing the benefits on the needy clearly would be appropriate. Payments now are roughly the difference between the market price per unit produced and a high government price per unit. Therefore, farms with more output get larger payments. Further, revising farm programs to act as aid to the needy would be difficult. Targeting amendments currently proposed generally are unworkable and likely would do little to change the actual distribution of benefits. Finally, because farmers currently are eligible for other aid programs and because few producers of significant output meet general welfare criteria, seemingly little real reason exists for attempting to convert farm programs rather than simply phasing down the payment levels overall.

Manure-sourced methane emissions from livestock operations in California will soon be subject to new regulation, as required by Senate Bill 1383, which was signed into law in 2016. Regulations, beginning in 2024, will require reductions in methane emissions from livestock manure, with a 40% reduction target by 2030. The California dairy industry accounts for most of the manure-sourced methane emissions in the state and, in order to reduce these emissions, government experts and authorities have encouraged expansion of anaerobic digestion of dairy waste — especially to produce transportation fuel. Renewable natural gas for vehicle fuel, produced from manure at digesters, is eligible for substantial federal and California environmental credits, which are now projected to contribute the bulk of the revenue for qualifying digesters. This article shows that investments in digesters, because they depend heavily on revenue created by government policy, rather than on market-based sales of natural gas, are highly vulnerable to the risk of policy change or even minor technical adjustments in environmental regulations. Without secure projections of revenue that will cover costs, regulations may cause increases in the shift of milk production out of California.

AbstractThe Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) substantially expands the authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate fresh produce marketed in the United States. This article uses an equilibrium‐displacement framework incorporating stochastic food‐borne illness outbreaks to simulate long‐run market effects of FSMA using the North American fresh‐tomato industry as a case study. We demonstrate how, under FSMA, certain categories of suppliers will gain advantage over others. Growers and suppliers within the United States, and their buyers, are likely to gain relative to foreign producers and importers because FSMA imposes specific requirements for importers. Among fully regulated growers, large growers will benefit relative to small growers. Many producers have already adopted food‐safety standards that closely resemble the FSMA rules, and the cost of implementing the FSMA requirements for these producers will be much lower than for other producers.

The United States and South Korea negotiated a bilateral trade agreement in 2007. After final legislative approval, likely later this year, high tariffs on exports of most California agricultural products to South Korea will be gradually eliminated. Already, with the tariffs in place, South Korea ranks among the top six destinations for many California agricultural exports. More-open access to the South Korean market will create significant opportunities for major commodities produced in California such as almonds and dairy products.