Download or read book Rent Dispersion in the US Agricultural Insurance Industry written by Smith, Vincent H. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central, but inadequately explored issue with respect to subsidized crop insurance programs concerns the costs of delivering insurance coverage to farmers. This study examines that issue in the context of the heavily subsidized US crop insurance program which has often been put forward as a model for agricultural insurance programs in other countries. US Government programs often rely on private firms to deliver income transfers or services, which then establish their own rent-seeking lobbies, which are shared with input suppliers. This rent dispersion process is examined in the context of the U.S. agricultural insurance industry, which receives as much as one third of the annual subsidies that support the federal crop insurance program. We find that as total payments to insurance companies increased between 2001 and 2009, an increasingly large share of the agricultural insurance industry’s rents accrued to insurance agents, although in markets where insurance companies possessed some oligopsony power, agent payments are smaller. The findings also suggest that the insurance industry (companies and independent agents) would almost surely provide the same service for substantially less than the gross revenues from the subsidies and underwriting gains they received.
Download or read book The Us Federal Crop Insurance Program written by Vincent Smith and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines how, in the context of three major crop insurance legislative initatives by the US government in 1989, 1994, and 2000, regulatory and other innovations to the federal crop insurance program have been designed to jointly benefit farm interest groups and the agricultural insurance industry, with spillover benefits for credit institutions that make loans to farmers. The analysis clearly demonstrates that those initiatives have resulted in considerable and generally increasing costs to US taxpayers and that they evolved as the result of explicit or implicit coalitions between farm interest groups and crop insurance interest groups.
Download or read book Economic Considerations in Crop Insurance written by Warren R. Bailey and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book To Review the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 and Related Crop Insurance Issues written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hearing to Review the State of the Crop Insurance Industry written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Agriculture. Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book USDA implementation of the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 and related crop insurance issues written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Implications of Slowing Growth in Emerging Market Economies for Hunger and Poverty in Rural Areas of Developing Countries written by Laborde Debucquet, David and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 25 years, economic growth rates in many developing countries have outpaced those in industrialized countries, and per capita incomes of these two groups of countries have started to converge. Growth in developing countries contributed to a dramatic drop—from 37 percent to 13 percent—in the global extreme poverty rate between 1990 and 201. However, the global economic outlook has deteriorated recently. This paper examines the impact of the actual and projected slowdown in the world economy since 2012 on the poor and on the potential for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It builds on the changes between 2012 and late 2015 in the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook projections to provide the basic slowdown scenario. It then uses a global model to assess the impacts of lower rates of productivity growth and consequent lower savings and investment on key price and income variables. The productivity shocks are passed directly to the production activities included in household microsimulation models for almost 300,000 households. These households are also affected by the modeled changes in prices and wages. Simulations allow us to assess the impacts of the slowdown on the real household incomes of the poor, and hence on the poverty rate. The results suggest that the poorest countries will see the greatest slowdown in poverty reduction, with over 5 percent of their population projected to remain below the poverty line. Overall 38 million fewer people will leave extreme poverty compared to earlier projections. Farm households are at particular risk in middle-income countries, with over 1.5 percent more of the farming population potentially not escaping extreme poverty in these countries. By 2030, average extreme poverty in rural areas is now projected to be about 7.5 percent, rather than 7.1 percent. While substantial poverty reduction is still expected between now and 2030, a strong focus on policies for poverty reduction will be vital to achieving the first SDG goal of eliminating poverty.
Download or read book Agricultural Policy in Disarray written by Vincent H. Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural Policy in Disarray provides fascinating, detailed, and contemporary evidence of how rent-seeking by small, well-organized interest groups results in government policies that do little good and much harm.
Download or read book The Tangled Web of Agricultural Insurance written by Jason Pearcy and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the effects of changes in major elements of the U.S. federal crop insurance program on the structure of the agricultural insurance industry. We model the interactions between farmers, insurance agents and insurance companies. Two symmetric equilibria are determined: one with competitive insurance companies and one where insurance companies form a collusive monopsony. We evaluate how marginal changes in government policy (changes in the premium subsidy rate, A&O subsidy rate, and loading factor) affect the insurance premium rate, agent compensation rates, agent effort levels, and market demand for crop insurance. Conditional on no prior government policy, farmers prefer a marginal increase in the premium subsidy rate. This change has the lowest associated net social cost, but is the policy least preferred by insurance companies. The insurance companies' most preferred policy is a marginal increase in the A&O subsidy rate, which has the highest associated net social cost, the highest cost to the government, and does not benefit farmers. We also evaluate the consequences of changes in crop prices. If the market for insurance agent services is competitive, then a change in crop prices does not change agent compensation rates, but otherwise the agent compensation rate will change. This result suggests an empirical test regarding insurance company market performance.
Download or read book To Amend the Federal Crop Insurance Act written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and published by . This book was released on 1944 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Making pulses affordable again written by Joshi, Pramod Kumar and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising prices and declining consumption of pulses cause concern in terms of both nutrition and food inflation in India. This paper outlines policy strategies to increase the availability of pulses at affordable prices in India and also points out limitations of some of the most common recommendations for achieving these objectives. There seems to be no option but to increase domestic production of pulses in India. The global supply of pulses is limited compared with India’s needs, and sizable imports by India are bound to increase world prices. Domestic production of pulses in India is most likely piecewise inelastic, meaning that small price increases do not translate into a significant supply response. Because farmers face both production and marketing risks, they increase pulse area and intensify production only when there is a large increase in expected prices that covers the risk premium. Droughts, too, are a major risk for pulses. Access to one or two protective irrigations during the growing season can possibly lead to sizable increases in pulse production and reduce the production risk. The har khet ko paani (assured irrigation) initiative under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) program should give priority to pulse-producing areas. The minimum support price (MSP) for pulses, without direct government procurement, helps traders more than farmers because it acts as a focal point for tacit collusion among traders. Farmers will benefit from the MSP only if it is raised substantially from its current levels. The increase in farmgate prices due to a higher MSP will not necessarily lead to an increase in the retail price of pulses because much of the wedge between farmgate prices and consumer prices is traders’ margin. Including subsidized pulses in public distribution systems can save households some money, but it has only a small effect on total consumption of pulses and almost no effect on total protein intake. We suggest, as more potent solutions, investing in research and extension for pulses, aggregating pulse growers into farmer producer organizations, and paying pulse growers or pulse-growing areas for the ecosystem services offered by pulses.
Download or read book Review of the Implementation of Public Law 106 224 the Agricultural Risk Protection Act written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Agriculture and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Adoption of food safety measures among Nepalese milk producers written by Kumar, Anjani and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food safety is the most vital component of food security. One option to ensure food safety is through enhancing compliance at the farm level. This study investigates the status, estimates the cost, identifies the determinants, and assesses the impact of compliance with food safety measures in milk production in Nepal. The study is based on cross-section primary data collected at the farm level from six districts of Nepal. These districts are known for milk production and capture the geographical and institutional diversity of milk production in the country. The study shows that the status of compliance with food safety measures at the dairy farm level is not very encouraging. The intensity with which food safety practices are adopted shows wide inter- and intra-district variations. This intensity depicts a positive relationship to herd size. The additional cost of compliance with food milk safety measures reveals an inverse relationship with herd size. The factors associated with the adoption of food safety measures are caste, number of children and elderly people in a family, household labor size, herd size, access to information, inspection for conformity with the safety and quality standards in dairy farming, perception of households about food safety assistance provided by milk buyers, and market outlet types. We also provide evidence of the impact of food safety measures on farm-gate prices and farmers’ profitability.
Download or read book Crop Insurance Reform written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Subcommittee on Agricultural Production and Stabilization of Prices and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economic Justification for Certain Salient Provisions of the Regulations Application and Policy for Wheat Crop Insurance written by William Hobson Rowe and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Linking smallholder farmers to commercial markets written by Ebata, Ayako and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Access to modern commercialization channels is key for smallholder farmers to be able to move away from subsistence farming and overcome poverty. However, achieving that goal is challenging for smallholders given their lack of appropriate managerial practices, production technology and infrastructure. This paper examines the effect of receiving training in two different entrepreneurial practices designed to link farmers to commercial markets: one direct aimed at the individual and farmer-association level and another indirect focused at the community level. We exploit an extensive panel dataset of staple bean farmers in Nicaragua who participated in a program run by a nongovernmental organization between 2007–2012. We find that the two market-linkage training activities had opposite effects on the commercialization of beans, especially on the intensive margin or volume of sales. While receiving direct training on entrepreneurial practices is positively associated with sales in commercial markets, training on municipality engagement (ME) activities is negatively associated. The market-linkage activities mainly affected entrant farmers as opposed to those already participating in commercial markets. We further find varying effects of the ME activities by plot size and leadership position. Additional results show that training activities that appear to work for bean producers do not necessarily work for other crop producers, and vice versa.
Download or read book United States agricultural policy written by Glauber, Joseph W. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-07-20 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the development of US agricultural policy and considers how it has affected US consumers and producers, as well as how US programs affect foreign producers and consumers within the context of the United States’ obligations under the World Trade Organization. Throughout its history, the United States has supported the farm sector through a myriad of policies affecting prices, production, and farm incomes. Although many of the policies put in place during the New Deal legislation in the 1930s were seen as temporary at the time, most have persisted in one form or another to the present day. And while many would argue that the form and function of today’s agricultural programs are less distortionary than before, the level of support provided to the sector is several billion dollars annually.
