ABSTRACT
In the context of farm commodity programs in the United States, targeting usually has a more narrow connotation than simply aiming impacts toward objectives. Effective targeting of any government program requires a clear understanding of what the program is intended to do and how to achieve that objective. In the case of farm commodity programs in the United States, there seems to be no consensus on either of these conditions. The targeting farm programs will mean adjusting programs to aim at three distributional objectives: (1) alleviating poverty among farm families; (2) securing the viability of financially vulnerable farms; and (3) encouraging maintenance of smaller or mid-sized farms relative to large farms or very small part-time farms. The empirical relationships between payments and farm size, farm incomes, or farm financial position motivate various schemes for targeting payments. This section has related direct payments to the distributions of gross sales and some financial characteristics of the farm operations.
