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Abstract
Various forms of income subsidy and price support programs have been a part of government farm policy since early in the 20th Century. The most recent farm program legislation, the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973, uses the concept of "target prices" to activate income subsidies to farmers if market prices should decline below these "target" or support levels. Current discussions concerning new farm policy programs include proposals to increase the support prices for feed grains. In addition, it has been proposed that the support prices be adjusted in future years based on USDA cost of production studies to reflect changes in the prices of production inputs. In reality, this adjustment process is a form of inflation indexing as practiced in many other sectors of the U.S. economy. Controversy has arisen in specification of the indexing process concerning the measurement of costs, particularly the annual charge for services of land, and the procedure to be used in reflecting land value increases in the index.