摘要：Since Congress was debating the fate of the next Farm Bill as USDA prepared its financial outlook for 2002, current law guided the level of direct payments. Without predicting changes in the commodity title of the Bill or any new emergency assistance, government payments are calculated to be $10.7 billion for 2002. Boosted by emergency assistance and loan deficiency payments (LDPs), government payments have exceeded $20 billion in each of the last 3 years (figure 1). The emergency assistance payments were the result of separate legislative initiatives enacted in 1999, 2000, and 2001 in response to the economic adversity that farmers were facing. Loan deficiency payments, which are intended to be counter-cyclical with commodity prices, are determined by established formulas, with the primary determinant being the gap between trigger prices and market prices for eligible commodities. As a result of higher prices projected for several of the major program crops, LDPs are expected to decline by 25 percent in 2002.
