ABSTRACT
As in the 2014 farm bill, agricultural policy in the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act and Agricultural Improvement Act continued the trend toward the Congressional authorization of risk management and insurance type programs. As part of economic theory, the intersection of supply and demand results from buyers and sellers coming to an agreement on a price that clears the market. The Cobweb theorem describes a time-dependent process whereby supply and demand, price and quantity, either cycle toward divergence away from, or convergence to, equilibrium. Shifting supply and demand curves represent risk and uncertainty and a moving target for policy makers. Early farm bills were of short duration, sometimes only a year long. In today’s political environment, the goal has been to create multi-year farm bills. The implementation of current commodity programs allows individual agricultural producers some flexibility to change programs annually in response to changing personal and national conditions.
