Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | Given that base acres haven't been updated since 1985 and only 20% of the farmland in NY is base acres it is really unfair for us (and many other areas) to continue to use base acres. It will mean more soybean acres here because corn is less profitable to grow here.
The problem I see with the current system is that it essentially is a subsidy for landlords & land prices in the Midwest.
But personally, the real problem with the system is the way the price support level is calculated using the olympic average system. It simply doesn't respond quickly enough to over-production. Since you can throw out the lowest price in the Olympic average the lower price doesn't get incorporated into the price calculation until the next year. If the low price got incorporated into the price calculation quicker then there might be less incentive to continue to plant too much corn. The program should protect against sudden one year declines in price but encourage cuts in acres the immediately following year. |
historic base acres vs planted acres
