If “Mother Nature bats last,” then federal conservation policy is barely in the game. It too-often operates with limits that drastically diminish the effectiveness of limited funding. The farmer’s learning curve, meanwhile, is full of risks and requires multiple seasons to work through. It is highlighted by the challenges in the all-critical spring planting window where cover crops add the most risk and could result in yield losses or even a failure to plant that could cause the farm to...| farmdoc daily
“It is hardly a lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes” (Wickard v. Filburn, 1942). That admonition from Justice Robert Jackson, writing for a…| farmdoc daily
Carl Zulauf, Jonathan Coppess, Nick Paulson, and Gary Schnitkey - This article compares economic loss with safety net payments for the nine large acreage crops that USDA, ERS reports a cost of production. 2024 crop safety net assistance is estimated to reduce the nine crop’s collective economic loss from 17% to slightly more than 3% of total economic cost. Coverage of individual crop economic loss varies widely, ranging from 180% (payments exceed economic loss by 80 percentage points) to 45...| farmdoc daily