Slide 27 of 49
Notes:
I don’t mean to be depressing. I just want you to be aware of some of the issues that you will probably confront. Hopefully, you are getting prepared to confront those future issues while you are here. Think of these as challenges. No, I have not given you any answers yet. If I had all the answers, I would be a very wealthy man, and teaching an economics class for the sheer fun of it. I have some ideas, but I want you to develop your own. I want you to start thinking about your own solutions as objectively as is possible.
Back to the budget. Agriculture, $9.8 billion or .65% of the total budget. Though not included formally in the budget as an entitlement program, former farm programs paid deficiency payments to many farmers if the market price of their commodity was lower than a legislated target price. For example, if the target price was $3.00 per bushel for corn, and the average market price for corn was $2.80 per bushel; a corn producer would receive a government check for $.20 per bushel of corn produced as a deficiency payment. As I have said before, these programs are being phased out at this time. Transition payments to farmers are now being made and will last only a few years. Any way you look at it, these payments are transfer payments to individuals or corporations that had to follow certain guidelines to be entitled to them. The budget allocation for USDA was $56.7 billion in 1995. To look at the details of the USDA budget click on the “Agricultural” link above.
