@article{Runge:13294,
      recid = {13294},
      author = {Runge, C. Ford},
      title = {U.S. FARM POLICY: CAN FAIR BE FIXED?},
      address = {1998},
      number = {1701-2016-138943},
      series = {Staff Paper P98-10},
      pages = {26},
      year = {1998},
      abstract = {In the scheme of things, the 1996 Federal Agricultural  Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) contained important  breaks with a tradition of crop-by-crop subsidies dating  back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.  It freed  many producers of "program commodities" (maize, grain  sorghum, wheat, barley, oats, cotton and rice) from a  system of crop-specific base acre accounting, merged these  accounts into a single "whole farm base," and allowed  production of any but a few crops on these lands.  Overall,  the freedom to produce in direct response to market forces,  rather than on the basis of crop-by-crop subsidies, as well  as the budget discipline of predetermined payments, were  important steps in the direction of decoupled lump-sum  compensation.  Yet from the point of view of advocates of  policy reform, FAIR represents an unfinished agenda.  A  variety of problems and issues remain.  First, the coverage  of "freedom to farm" is only partial, with numerous  commodities left out of the decoupling program.  Second,  those critical of the distributive impacts of the commodity  programs find little to cheer about in the new contracts,  and consider the acronym FAIR ironic.  Supply responses  induced by price levels in the first two years of FAIR have  led to substantially lower prices and marketing receipts in  1998.  A call has now gone up to resuscitate some form of  safety net, such as a return to deficiency payments or an  extension and increase in contract payments under the 1996  Act.  It is appropriate to move now to finish the  unfinished agenda of the 1996 Act by implementing a long  term safety net based on some form of revenue assurance (á  la Cochrane and Runge, 1992).},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/13294},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.13294},
}