The Incidence and Implications of Binding Farm Program Payment Limits*

Payment limits have played an important role in U.S. farm policy deliberations for the last 30 years. Current limits are largely non-binding because of the use of commodity certificates and the difficulties associated with tracing payments to individuals. Proposals to limit payments have played an important role in deliberations over the 2007 Farm Bill. An amendment to the Senate version of the legislation would significantly strengthen and enforce limits on payments. We use farm-level data on production, ex-post realizations of payments, and reported base yields and acreage to consider the potential impacts of payment limits. Our results suggest that rice, peanuts, and cotton would be the only crops to realize substantial impacts from the limits currently under discussion. However, even for these commodities, the likely proportion of growers and total acreage subject to the limits would be relatively modest. Copyright 2008 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association