Ad hoc and Farm Bill payments impact on non-real estate farm debt

The Farm Bill highlights both one of the great divides in our political process, as well as one of the most beneficial partnerships in politics. Historically, partnerships between rural and urban have been key to successful passage of the Farm Bill. However, calls to divide nutrition support and agricultural support programs continue, and there are increasingly diverse viewpoints regarding agricultural programs. To build the Farm Bill of the future, one that is comprehensive and addresses the needs of not just producers, but ultimately everyone impacted by this Bill, there needs to be a broader coalition of partnerships and voices involved in the development process. This required not focusing on the “us vs. them” mentality and distinct silos of programs, but increased dialogue and partnerships between agricultural (traditional and specialty crops), environmental, and consumer organizations. In this current political and social climate, new partnerships and increased dialogue are keys to developing programs and legislation with broad support. I advocate the importance of those involved in representing the food industry to develop an understanding of the agricultural production sector, for those representing all aspects of agriculture to have an understanding of food production, retail, and marketing, and for both to understand the role and impact of the consumer in this process. These broad coalitions of support will help ensure future Congressional support for this type of comprehensive food, farm, rural and nutritional legislation, something that appears increasingly difficult each time this cycle comes around.

Commercial Bank Performance and Loan Delinquency

Research background Providing the microfinance to rural women is the prime concern of the government at central and state level in which the best microfinance programme is the Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme. However, the Delinquency rate of the SHGBLP loan is on the higher side. As, borrowers do not make their loan repayments on time. Purpose The purpose of this research is to examine which types of self-help groups make timely repayments of an old loan. Also, to find out the different aspects of the loan delinquency rate which affect them and to find out the impact of self-help group maturity on loan repayment. Research methodology For this a total of 300 members were selected from the Udaipur and Banswara district of Rajasthan. Further, Tobit Regression has been applied to find out the factors which affect the loan delinquency percentages in the Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme. Results The results highlighted that the maturity of the SHG group affects their repayment performance as old SHGs are functioning well in terms of repayment. The reason for the high delinquency rate is that the members had no surplus Income to repay back because of the failure of Business, natural calamities and medical issues. The members who are repaying the loan back on time are giving from their agriculture and enterprise profits. Novelty A lot of research has been carried out on the Impact of SHGBLP on many other factors but there is no research that has been done to find out why the programme has high loan delinquencies after being the best together with the impactful microfinance programme.

Since the Great Depression, the federal government has implemented agricultural programs by passing what is known as the farm bill. These farm bills typically contain sunset provisions, requiring new farm bills to be passed roughly every five years. These farm bill votes provide ample opportunities for the agricultural lobby to engage in political rent seeking behavior. There is a considerable literature on the impact of direct campaign contributions on farm bill amendment votes. The approach used in this literature is to identify a congressional floor level amendment vote to a farm bill that benefits a crop specific agricultural interest. Through the use of a simultaneous equations probit-tobit model, the relationship between donations and the amendment vote is estimated. This research uses a similar approach. Instead of looking at specific amendment votes, my paper looks at final farm bill votes in the House of Representatives, treating each farm bill vote as a repeated observation of the same event. In so doing, a time series is constructed, allowing for study of how historical events impact the actions of farming lobbies and legislators. Data on direct campaign donations comes from the Federal Election Commission. These data contain information on what industry the donating PAC represents, along with data on the recipients of campaign donations. The donation data is what is referred to in the political economy literature as “hard money” donations. These donations are highly regulated by the FEC, with a maximum contribution limit per PAC. Farming interests are able to bypass these contribution limits by creating more PACs, assuming organizational costs are sufficiently low. These data are merged with information on legislator characteristics, provided by a data repository maintained by Charles Stewart III. These data include chamber seniority, committee membership, committee seniority and party affiliation. A temporally consistent measure of political ideology comes from Lewis, Poole and Rosenthal. Information on congressional votes is provided by Civic Impulse LLC. Production data by crop is acquired from the USDA NASS, while data on farming demographics comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Using reasonable assumptions, these data are converted from county level data to congressional district level geospatial shape files using data provided by Lewis, DeVine, Pitcher and Martis. Data are aggregated to the level of the crop lobby. That is to say, donations from multiple PACs representing the same crop to the same legislator are aggregated together. The unit of observation is a donation from a specific agricultural interest to a specific legislator in a given election cycle in which a farm bill vote take place. The time series consists of the 1985, 1990, 1996, 2002 and 2008 farm bills. Crop lobbies included in this model are the cotton, peanuts, rice, sugar beets and sugar cane lobbies. The model is in the form of a simultaneous probit-tobit model as outlined by Chappell (1982). The probit equation models the vote decision of the legislator on the farm bill. The probability that the legislator votes yes is a function of the amount of campaign donations received from various agricultural PACs, the initial policy position of the legislator (i.e. political ideology) and the farming related demographic attributes of the legislator’s district. The tobit equation represents the donation decision of the farming interest. This decision is a function of legislative power (such as committee membership and seniority), the probability of reelection, and the level of crop production in the legislator’s district. The model is identified through the use of exclusion restrictions. My model extends this framework through the use of a pooled cross section over multiple time periods. By treating each farm bill as a new observation of the same event, this approach allows for the use 1 temporal indicator variables to study the impacts of historical events on farm bill votes. Historical events studied thus far are the impacts of political regime changes in the House of Representatives and the impacts of legal regime changes in campaign finance law. The preliminary version of this model estimates the relationship between each crop lobby and the legislators separately. That is to say, a two equation model is estimated, with the donation of one crop lobby modeled in a tobit equation and the legislator’s vote modeled in a probit equation. The more innovative version of this model estimates the donation equations of all of the crop lobbies, along with the vote equation simultaneously. This better reflects the interconnected nature of the various farming interests and the legislator’s final farm bill vote decision. Results show that committee membership is a highly significant determinant of how much support a legislator receives. Two committees are tracked; membership on the House Agricultural Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. While the farm bill has little to do with appropriations, this is included because funding the programs of the farm bill requires separate legislation, which is drafted by the appropriations committee. This makes appropriations committee members important allies in any policy involving the disbursement of federal funds. In all versions of this model, agricultural committee membership has a positive and highly significant impact on the donation decision. For most crop lobbies, appropriations committee membership is also highly significant and positive. This suggests that farming PACs recognize that they also need the support of legislators that control funding. For most crop lobbies, the level of production of their crop in a legislator’s district has a positive and significant impact on the level of donations received. This suggests that farming lobbies support legislators that represent the districts that their members reside in. The impact of party majority is highly significant for most crop lobbies. The sign on the effect varies between farming interests, suggesting partisan heterogeneity among different groups of farmers. In the vote equation, political ideology, farming demographics and donations have significant impacts on the decision to vote yes, when each lobby is estimated separately and jointly. Results appear to be robust to specification, and the correlation coefficients between the equations imply that the system is, in fact, endogenous. The donation equations of the various farming lobbies are highly correlated with each other. These results extend the literature on agricultural political rent seeking by extending the previous, isolated analyses to a more broad analysis over a pooled cross section. These results suggest that political regime changes have a significant impact on both legislators and special interests, and demonstrate the importance of the appropriations committee to the agricultural sector, which has not been studied by previous research.

Analyzing the Causes and Evolution of Loan Delinquency/Arrears within Microfinance Institutions. A Critical Path of Action.

If a Republican administration is elected for 1989-93, I expect it to advocate continuation of the trends established in the 1985 farm bill. The main innovations in policy would come in the context of a GATT agreement in which the United States could negotiate a phased reduction in the level of agricultural subsidies to all commodities in all countries simultaneously. Only in that situation would I expect any radical changes in U.S. farm policy-under either a Democratic or a Republican administration. In addition to the trade negotiations in Geneva, the other important influence on the next farm bill will be the pressure for deficit reduction which will be hanging over the next administration, again regardless of who is president. The next farm bill is not likely to be written in 1990, when the Food Security Act of 1985 expires. In 1989, when Congress addresses the federal budget deficit, agricultural programs are likely to suffer some cuts. Nobody in Congress wants to write a farm bill in an election year, so I would expect an extension of current law next year with modest modifications in levels of several policy instruments to meet the budget target. The first time Congress will consider writing an omnibus farm bill likely will be in 1991.

Bank Capital, Loan Delinquencies, and Real Estate Lending

Factors affecting delinquency of household credit in the U.S.: Does consumer sentiment play a role?

As I sit here writing in mid-October, the political world is in a whirlwind. The US House of Representatives has been without a speaker for the longest period in the nation's history, an event precipitated by the near-miss of what most in the Washington community thought was likely to be an extended government shutdown. And between pen time and press time, we will narrowly avoid that again in mid-November (or fail to do so), and we will have returned to typical congressional and federal agency function (or not). Upon publication, this may all be ancient history, or perhaps we’ll still be living it. So why do I bring this up? Because I had committed to writing this column about the 2023 farm bill and how it would help protect sources of drinking water. Perhaps with a bit of naivety, I had assumed months ago that since the 2018 farm bill (formally the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018) expired on September 30, we would either have a new one passed or at least be able to talk about the House and Senate proposals and how those might shake out. At this point, we haven’t yet reached even the first version of the bill, largely because Congress is occupied with other things, and the 2023 farm bill is looking much more likely to instead be the 2024 farm bill. Presumably there will also be a short-term extension of the existing law because the authorization for many farm bill programs has expired, and Congress will run out of grace time at the end of December. The 2018 law yielded significant benefits, including making source water protection a goal of the conservation programs and dedicating 10% of spending on conservation programs (except the conservation reserve program) for protecting sources of drinking water. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has worked to implement the law, and for more than five years now, AWWA has been actively encouraging utilities with source water needs to work with their NRCS state conservationist and to seek to participate in farm bill programs where appropriate. And a great many have, often bringing millions of dollars of local investment in conservation activities that benefit source waters. Has the journey thus far been flawless? Of course not! Like with any complex program, there have been speed bumps, and there continue to be areas for improvement. But by and large, the relationship AWWA has enjoyed with NRCS has been collegial and problem-solving in nature, following up on concerns as they occur, continually seeking better information, and using a collaborative dialogue to figure out next steps. The biggest challenges we’ve encountered tend to be around different cultures and vocabularies between the water sector and the agricultural sector, as well as problems for some utilities that have been interested but haven’t been able to get solid responses to their inquiries, likely due to understaffing. As we and our partners push for a 2023 or 2024 farm bill, we will be keeping these principles in mind and looking to find any other opportunities to protect the nation's drinking water. Adam T. Carpenter is the manager of energy and environmental policy at the AWWA Government Affairs Office in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at [email protected].

From 2021 to 2023, food insecurity in the United States increased from 10.2% to 13.5%, and food inflation rose to nearly 20%. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - the largest food assistance program, in the U.S. is funded and governed by the Farm Bill – a multi-year federal omnibus bill that provides agriculture and nutrition program funding. The 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2024, and while funding for SNAP has been extended through a Continuing Resolution, program reauthorization is needed. Negotiations on a new Farm Bill have included SNAP proposals to limit state discretion on work requirements during periods of low job availability, indefinitely freeze the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, and lift the ban on prepared meals. This brief describes how these proposals could increase food insecurity and suggests way the new Farm Bill could better serve the nutritional needs of low-income households.

In proclaiming the week of August 23–29 National Community Gardening Week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted, “Community gardens provide numerous benefits including opportunities for local food production, resource conservation, and neighborhood beautification. But they also promote family and community interaction and enhance opportunities to eat healthy, nutritious foods. Each of these benefits is something we can and should strive for.” Vilsack’s statement was the latest in a string of signals in the past 7 months that suggest significant changes are afoot at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). On 29 July 2009 Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan inaugurated a new rooftop garden at the offices of the USDA Economic Research Service. In early spring, Vilsack “broke pavement” for a vegetable garden known as the People’s Garden, which was planted in front of USDA headquarters across from the National Mall. And a March 2009 planning meeting to discuss the People’s Garden and other sustainability initiatives, chaired by Vilsack, included people not typically seen at USDA meetings in the past: representatives from community garden associations, local food policy councils, botanical gardens, and the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit organization in Pennsylvania dedicated to organic farming research. Vilsack “talked about sustainability, linking agriculture, food, and human health in a way that you haven’t heard [from USDA],” recalls Rose Hayden-Smith, a fellow at the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and master gardener for the California Cooperative Extension service.

The short-term Federal funds rate, which impacts the interest rate of other loans, has been increasing since March 2022. The rate can disproportionately affect demand for different types of loans, as well as the choice of the lender for different farm sizes. This report examines farm debt by lenders, as well as other attributes, such as the use of different loan types (real estate and non-real estate) among different types of farm businesses. The authors used data from multiple sources, including the USDA, Economic Research Service's Farm Income and Wealth Statistics and Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), from 2012 to 2021 to understand the farm debt situation. Total U.S. farm debt in 2021 was $503.7 billion (in 2022 dollars), which was $127.8 billion (34 percent) higher compared with 2012 and was primarily driven by farm real estate debt. Total farm real estate debt was $344.5 billion, or more than two-thirds of total debt in 2021. The Farm Credit System, a nationwide network of borrower-owned lending institutions and specialized service organizations, provided 45 percent of total debt, and commercial banks provided 35 percent, resulting in these two lender entities providing 80 percent of the sector’s debt. The share of farm businesses with some debt grew as gross cash farm income increased along with the average and median loan size

Milk and dairy product prices have fallen to their lowest levels in 3 years following the record highs of 2004 and 2005. The large government stockpiles of non-fat dry milk are gone, but threaten to build again as non-fat dry milk and cheese prices decline nearer the support price level. A new farm bill is scheduled to be written in 2007. The Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program included in the last farm bill was only authorized through September 2005. Subsequent legislation reinstated the MILC program through August 2007. WTO negotiations are on-going and could influence U.S. farm programs 1/. Dairy’s role in the U.S. amber box limit of $19.1 billion may necessitate some possible trade-offs with other commodities. Dairy counts about $4.2 billion toward the annual amber box limit, but actual spending only averages about $1 billion (Outlaw, et al). The pressure of low prices, WTO negotiations, MILC continuation, and a new farm bill has created the potential for a number of options and alternatives for dairy policy. This paper examines the regional and structural impacts of 3 dairy policy options: MILC continuation, a target price/deficiency payment program, and an increase in the support price. All three options are designed to spend $400 million in amber box payments per year. The analysis uses representative dairy farms in major milk producing regions of the country developed by the AFPC for policy analysis.

Introduction: Stock shortage is one of the development impasses in developing countries and trough it the agriculture sector has faced with the most limitation. The share of Iran’s agricultural sector from total investments after the Islamic revolution (1979) has been just 5.5 percent. This fact causes low efficiency in Iran’s agriculture sector. For instance per each 1 cubic meter of water in Iran’s agriculture sector, less that 1 kilogram dry food produced and each Iranian farmer achieves less annual income and has less mechanization in comparison with similar countries in Iran’s 1404 perspective document. Therefore, it is clear that increasing investment in agriculture sector, optimize the budget allocation for this sector is mandatory however has not been adequately and scientifically revised until now. Thus, in this research optimum budget allocation of Iran- Khorasan Razavi province agriculture sector was modeled. Materials and Methods: In order to model the optimum budget allocation of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector at first optimum budget allocation between agriculture programs was modeled with compounding three indexes: 1. Analyzing the priorities of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector experts with the application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), 2. The average share of agriculture sector programs from 4th country’s development program for Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector, and 3.The average share of agriculture sector programs from 5th country’s development program for Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector. Then, using Delphi technique potential indexes of each program was determined. After that, determined potential indexes were weighted using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and finally, using numerical taxonomy model to optimize allocation of the program’s budget between cities based on two scenarios. Required data, also was gathered from the budget and planning office of Khorasan Razavi’s Jahad Keshavarzi organization during 2006-2015. They were collected through distributed binary comparison questionnaires related to AHP model between Khorasan Razavi’s agricultural experts in 2015 and distributed questionnaires related to Delphi technique between Khorasan Razavi’s agricultural experts in 2015. Indeed, Super decision and Taxonomy software were applied to analyze the gathered data. Results and Discussion: Results of budget allocation of Khorasan Razavi province’s agriculture sector using three mentioned indexes showed that between 8 programs, P1 and P6 have the most and least share, respectively. The results of the Delphi technique for determining potential indexes of between cities budget allocation of agriculture sector programs indicated that totally there are 62 indexes. Findings of between cities budget allocation of agriculture sector programs showed that for budget allocation of P1 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Kalat and Davarzan cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P2 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Bardaskan and Kalat cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P3 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Mashhad and Joghatai cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P4 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Jovein and Torghabe Shandiz cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P5 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Chenaran and Neishabour cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P6 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Mashhad and Khoushab cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. For budget allocation of P7 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Neishabour and Saleh Abad cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. Finally, for budget allocation of P8 based on 1 and 2 scenarios, Neishabour and Khoushab cities have the most and least share, respectively and vice versa. Conclusion: The study concludes that the agriculture sector budget of Khorasan Razavi Province’s has not been allocated optimally. Therefore, paying attention to this fact that agriculture sector budget allocation which carried out previously between various programs, have been provided different instructions for opposite ideas always caused to challenge between beneficiary groups. This study provided a scientific and comprehensive model for budget allocation of agriculture sector between programs and cities using agriculture experts, and can be suggested to governors and Jahad Keshavarzi organizations to apply the results.

A study of farm loan repayment problems in Southwestern Nigeria