IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/apecpp/v41y2019i3p498-518..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Farm Size Matter? Distribution of Crop Insurance Subsidies and Government Program Payments across U.S. Farms

Author

Listed:
  • Anton Bekkerman
  • Eric J Belasco
  • Vincent H Smith
  • Chris McIntoshEditor

Abstract

This study uses farm-level information from the ARMS database to evaluate the distribution of payments from major 2014 Farm Bill safety net programs—federal crop insurance, Agricultural Risk Coverage, and Price Loss Coverage—across farm size. Results indicate that farms within the top decile for crop sales receive over two-thirds of the total payments from these programs. Recent legislative proposals to implement payment caps on each farm are shown to impact a relatively small percentage of farms that are almost entirely within the top decile of crop sales. However, implementing these caps is likely to result in as much as $2.51 billion in taxpayer savings. These help provide direction for continued efforts to design cost-effective, equitable agricultural safety net policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Anton Bekkerman & Eric J Belasco & Vincent H Smith & Chris McIntoshEditor, 2019. "Does Farm Size Matter? Distribution of Crop Insurance Subsidies and Government Program Payments across U.S. Farms," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 41(3), pages 498-518.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:41:y:2019:i:3:p:498-518.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppy024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tsiboe, Francis & Turner, Dylan, 2023. "The crop insurance demand response to premium subsidies: Evidence from U.S. Agriculture," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    2. Obed Quaicoe & Fafanyo Asiseh & Anthony Baffoe‐Bonnie & John N. Ng'ombe, 2024. "Small farms in North Carolina, United States: Analyzing farm and operator characteristics in the pursuit of economic resilience and sustainability," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(1), pages 13-31, March.
    3. Ibrahima Sall & Russell Tronstad, 2021. "Simultaneous Analysis of Insurance Participation and Acreage Response from Subsidized Crop Insurance for Cotton," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Michael A. Boland & Brian C. Briggeman & Keri Jacobs & Phil Kenkel & Gregory McKee & John L. Park, 2021. "Research Priorities for Agricultural Cooperatives and their Farmer‐Members," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(2), pages 573-585, June.
    5. Joseph Glauber & Vince Smith, 2021. "Trends in US Agricultural Policy since 2000 and Implications for the Next Twenty Years," EuroChoices, The Agricultural Economics Society, vol. 20(2), pages 58-63, August.
    6. Aimee Imlay, 2025. "The end of direct farm payments and rural poverty in the American Midwest," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 42(2), pages 1083-1097, June.
    7. Jan Pokrivcak & Marian Toth & Pavel Ciaian & Mario Juliny, 2025. "Does farm ownership structure matter? Distribution of CAP subsidies between primary and final beneficiaries in Slovakia," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 71(2), pages 71-85.
    8. Ar. R. T. Hidayat & Corinthias P. M. Sianipar & Shizuka Hashimoto & Satoshi Hoshino & Muhammad Dimyati & Ahmad E. Yustika, 2023. "Personal Cognition and Implicit Constructs Affecting Preferential Decisions on Farmland Ownership: Multiple Case Studies in Kediri, East Java, Indonesia," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-23, September.
    9. Jisang Yu & Sunghun Lim, 2025. "Understanding inequality in U.S. farm subsidies using large‐scale administrative data," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 107(3), pages 752-774, May.
    10. Belasco, Eric J., 2020. "WAEA Presidential Address: Moving Agricultural Policy Forward: Or, There and Back Again," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 45(3), September.
    11. Nitta, Atomu & Yamamoto, Yasutaka & Kondo, Katsunobu & Sawauchi, Daisuke, 2020. "Direct payments to Japanese farmers: Do they reduce rice income inequality? Lessons for other Asian countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 968-981.
    12. Boland, Michael A. & Kopka, Christopher J. & Jacobs, Keri L. & Berner, Courtney & Briggeman, Brian C. & Elliott, Matthew & Friend, Diane & Kenkel, Phil & McKee, Greg & Olson, Frayne & Park, John L. & , 2022. "Extension Programming During a Pandemic: The Cooperative Director Foundations Program," Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 4(2), July.
    13. Aibo Yao & Lin Jiang & Bingxue Guo & Wei Li, 2025. "Subsidy Policy Interactions in Agricultural Supply Chains: An Interdepartmental Coordination Perspective," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-27, July.
    14. Alia DeLong & Marilyn E. Swisher & Carlene A. Chase & Tracy Irani & Jorge Ruiz-Menjivar, 2023. "The Roots of First-Generation Farmers: The Role of Inspiration in Starting an Organic Farm," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-20, June.
    15. Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Tatiana Drugova, 2022. "On the growth process of US agricultural land," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1727-1740, September.
    16. Vincent H. Smith & Joseph W. Glauber, 2019. "The Future of US Farm Policy," EuroChoices, The Agricultural Economics Society, vol. 18(1), pages 42-48, April.
    17. Sankalp Sharma & Cory G. Walters, 2020. "Influence of farm size and insured type on crop insurance returns," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 440-452, June.
    18. Belasco, Eric J. & Smith, Vincent, 2022. "The impact of policy design on payment concentration in Ad-hoc disaster Relief: Lessons from the Market Facilitation and Coronavirus food Assistance programs," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:41:y:2019:i:3:p:498-518.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.