Spending Impacts of House Proposal for Commodity Title Changes

The House Agriculture Committee released its proposal for the next farm bill. As expected, the House Proposal increases statutory reference prices for all covered commodities but with significant differences across commodities. The result is that some program crops will have much higher statutory reference prices and larger expected payments per base acre than other program crops. Base acres in rice, peanuts, and seed cotton gain much more than corn, soybeans, and wheat. Counties in the South and the Delta region gain much more than the rest of the United States. A conservative estimate of increased commodity title spending is over $30 billion.