Food & Agricultural Policy Analysis

The first paper examines producers risk management strategies, including crop insurance. The second paper examines the impact of crop yield distributions on crop insurance premiums. The third paper looks at expanding crop insurance to organic producers. The fourth paper proposes offering farmers the opportunity to self-insure through crop insurance savings accounts.

Papers will look at the effects of a variety of taxes and nudges on consumer decision making. Outcomes of interest include diet quality and restaurant revenue.

This symposium will address the uniqueness’s of agricultural labor, policy options being considered, and problems in modeling.

Policy-makers are under pressure globally to protect producers and consumers from volatile food prices. This is fueling discussions in various countries to move away from decoupled farm support to support which is conditional on market prices. At the same time accession to the WTO is inducing countries to move to more decoupled support for farmers. This session discusses trends and challenges for the future.

The 2012 Farm Bill debate is concerned with how best to provide support and risk management tools for producers, with a focus on shallow-loss programs such as ACRE vs. deep-loss programs such as crop insurance. The fourth paper examines the impact of direct payments on producers' labor allocation decisions.

A selection of papers that look at topics which look at the environmental impact of agriculture. Papers look at carbon pricing and land use under the conservation reserve program.

Examining linkages between psychology and economic decision making in the context of producers and consumers provides an important comparison that could contribute to effective policies. In this session we aim 1) to highlight the role of values, perceptions and attitudes in producer and consumer decision making and 2) to compare the determinants of decisions in different contexts to illustrate the links between specific decisions and specific values or attitudes.

Agri-environmental schemes (AES), some times also denoted payments for environmental services (PES) have been in operation for quite some time. How well has these schemes been designed from a theory perspective, and what are the practical experiences? These are the back issues for the following questions? • How should AESs be formulated to reach stated policy objectives and meet the criteria of being targeted, transparent, tractable? • What is needed in terms of knowledge/science to support the practical design of efficient and equitable AESs? • If this knowledge is not available, what would be meaningful second-best policies and what are their pitfalls? • What are the impacts of such schemes on commodity production and farm profits?

This session presents a series of papers which address agricultural policy issues from a novel perspective.

This is the first of two sessions focusing on fundamental aspects of food security: i) long run global food supply scenarios and their implications for the trend level of food prices, and ii) the variance of prices around that level. Of critical significance to sustainable global poverty reduction is the trend level of food prices. During the 20th century real food prices in international markets traced a downward path but have spiked several times in recent years. Will historians see the past few years as an aberration on a continuing long-run downward trajectory for food prices, or will they be seen as the beginning of a long period of high and even rising prices for farm products?

This session presents a series of papers describing policies aimed at smallholder producers in Africa.

This is the second of two sessions focusing on fundamental aspects of food security: i) long run global food supply scenarios and their implications for the trend level of food prices, and ii) the variance of prices around that level. National governments, groups such as the G-20, and the major international economic organizations have worried over food price variability over the past four years. Certainly some groups are harmed by fluctuating prices, but others may benefit. Understanding the causes and effects of those fluctuations – and of the likely effects of policy responses to price spikes on markets, aggregate national welfare and its distribution – is essential for better policy making in this area.

This session focuses on government policy issues affecting the livestock industries including U.S. horse slaughter policies, comparing U.S. and Canadian cattle policies, and examining U.S. dairy producers preferences for the 2012 Farm Bill. A fourth paper examines how firm policies related to long-term contracts affect the dairy processing industry.

These papers look at how food access affects healthy eating, food security and crime. Papers deal with both domestic and international food security.

This session aims at stimulating a discussion on evaluation of biofuels policy and its effectiveness by providing an overview of different applied economics methodologies that are used for investigating economic, environmental and social aspects of biofuels markets and policies. It will show and distinguish benefits of different evaluation approaches and underline the implications for investigating various biofuels market and policy questions. The session will include a broad spectrum of biofuels analysts, both scientists and practitioners and help to elaborate on methods to support the process of biofuels market assessments and policy making and design in the future.

Subsidized crop insurance has become the major farm program. Crop insurance subsidies already amount to about $6 Billion per year and current proposals for replacing direct payments with “shallow-loss protection” would raise the levels of subsidized protection and increase the cost of the program. The economic justification for subsidizing farming in this way deserves continued critical public examination.

In the last decade, the biggest driver of change in agriculture has been government policies promoting biofuels. As of December 31, 2011, the U.S. let its ethanol subsidy expire. This session focuses on the impact of changes in biofuel policies in the U.S. and the impacts of biofuel policies on agricultural sectors in the U.S. and Brazil.

A collection of papers which study important Federal nutrition support programs. Several studies look at the effects on health, food security and diet quality.