that would affect your retirement, we should give you plenty of time to adjust your saving pattern so you still have the healthy retirement to deserve. economists from that issue, it is clear. the long-run budget deficit and it is clear that moving earlier is better than moving later that it isn't clear that it affects retirees. it is more giving people a chance to play and to minimize the effect. >> you have survived your hour. comingou very much for and i hope you will join us again. course, thank of you. now at the alive american enterprise institute in washington.

is out this week but we are alive with the agriculture committee. agriculture economist will talk thet the process and where farm bill stands, that is just getting underway now on c-span. >> i need a script. i would like to thank you all for coming to this panel event. this is a real pleasure and privilege to have these event and to welcome you all to them. i am dr. vincent smith. economicsfessor of and i am the director of the

american enterprise institute's aquaculture studies program. the program has supported the work of a wide range of scholars. about the focus on the u.s. agriculture policy. their work has resulted in the series of 18 papers that have been published on the ai with page. hard covers are available. u.s. the rubric, agricultural policy in disarray. in a way, it is an homage. an homage to the marvelous economist to won -- who ran the program for many years and was one of the most distinguished agriculture economist in the world. dr.sumner studied with johnson when he was at the university of chicago. is that correct? >> yes. >> he was a wonderful man. the other members of the panel

panel, dr. barry goodwin. recent president of the leading cultural economics association of the world. he will focus on title i subsidy therams which include programs that were introduced in 2014. we have the professor of agricultural economics at north carolina state university. he is widely regarded as the leading expert on u.s. sugar policy. he is also widely acknowledged as one of the leading thinkers about agricultural trade issues. is our fourth speaker. the chair in

agricultural economics at uc davis and served as what we are now calling today the usa -- the usda chief economist. on april 12, the chair of the house agriculture committee released his draft version of a farm bill. and it was an astonishing atypical farm bill approach to that committee. memberso support with of the minority party. it would maintain spending on major subsidy programs at the current or moderately increased levels. fact thatnding the the large subsidies go to companies with little debts and with no risk of failing because of one year's outcome. they are priced cap's structured

to address that that every self-respecting manager of the farm would be fully aware of that. other programs were lucrative for agricultural producers and they would also be retained. that includes the current sugar program which is touted as no cost to taxpayers would is a cost to consumers. and the processing sector quite a lot. so all of this is taking place in the context of a financial environment within which the overwhelming majority of farms are in environmentally sound conditions. there are certain areas where costs have been low or atypically high. but if we look at the overall ,ndications of farm finances profits or where you would expect them to be over the longer run rather than focusing

at 2012 which was a record year for farm incomes. no one could reasonably expect that level of prices to continue. debt.s have very little the debt-acid ratio is forecasted by the usda to be fractionally down from last year. commodity prices for many crops and livestock are at or close to the longer than average levels. context, i do want to begin the panel program by giving the floor to dr. goodwin to discuss title i programs. goodwin: thank you for allowing us this chance to talk on farm policy again. i'm going to mainly talk on title i programs, which typically has been the main of thety program title

farm bill. and before we do that, i want to say a little bit about the political setting and economic setting. i will read you this entire quote. it is quite telling in terms of what is happening now with the farm bill. it notes there has been a 45% the in net farm income, largest drop since the great depression. a drop since 2013. farms are now highly or extremely leveraged. 'sis was chairman conaway opening statement when the farm bill deliberations were beginning. if you look at farm income, farm tosehold income, relative , it it-household income above since the early 1990's,

both the mean income and media income. all includes income from sources. the breakout by different occupations, it really tells the same story. typically much wealthier and enjoy higher incomes. you see the mean household income there. mentioned the leverage rate. the chairman's statement there was talking about how one out of 10 farms are in difficulty. but looking at this compared to other lines of credit, you see the farm operating live on -- the farm operating loan is operating positively.

low debt-acid ratios. , byloans are not delinquent and large, as a whole. so if you notable changes in title i. the payment limit thing is the big thing i have seen. ashave coffin coming back in a crop through the oilseed. that was included in the 2018 bipartisan budget act and it will be prominent in the farm bill. payment limits have been established on a person or legal entity level at $125,000 but the big change is that eligible family members -- each being eligible for the $125,000 -- includes nieces, nephews, cousins, corporations and so forth and they have to be exempt as well.s testing

so essentially, not that there has been binding payment on this, i think there always has been real difficulty in having a binding payment limit but it now ofms that the illusion payment limits has been set aside. i won't go through all of this but i try to highlight here, database, where they do a great job with consolidating numbers, just to give you an idea of what the difference title i numbers are. i has been,, title over most of this time, the major source of farm subsidy payments. with flexibility contract payments. in the late 1990's was

a big part of it. and you can see here which program crops are getting the bulk of the support. wheat, the conservation reserve program. it weighs in their heavily. and those are sorted by totals. so the message is not the individual programs but the crops that stand out and the fact that there are a lot of avenues to get subsidies to farmers. a lot of different programs. is said about concentration of payment. we could debate about whether that is a reasonable thing to worry about what it is the case with agriculture being quite concentrated now, becoming more so every year. and payments are based upon acres, base acres or production or whatever form they are in,

they tend to because it treated among larger farmers so the top 10% are getting 77% of the payments. top 20% is over 90%. not a surprise. we have done several papers in this series. and we have looked at how these different things have broken out and i think farm bill, that is a pretty good predictor of what we will see, going forward, but a lot of support has now shifted into the so-called safety net of crop insurance. the outlays now go to that. so we have seen a shift towards crop insurance. here ascan see that well. the so-called safety net. premium subsidies and operating expenses and the like. they have largely replaced what

had been the commodity specific outlays, early on. and you see a early on that there was a big role for disaster assistance which has largely been replaced by subsidized crop insurance. heavily subsidized insurance. , and we are me now, work looking at this if i can have direct support. peanuts really stand out. we have a paper on the peanut that i was surprised, even and i come from an area that grows a lot of peanuts. it soars off the chart. sorghum, cotton, rice. the share of the value of production, peanuts, rice and cotton stand out.

peanuts especially. c electionhe aar they had to make in the farm bill we are offering now and interestingly enough, they went with what was in their best interest but it turned out that corn and soybean farmers are -- farmers were astute at seeing the better deal. rice and peanuts farms, the support is strong there. .hey went with the plc there was space reallocation which raises interesting questions about wto obligations and whether there is support. my circle is off a little bit there that this is just to show soybeans and and

-- corn and soybeans are heavily on tarc county level. rice and peanut are the opposite. very much in plc. we come off the high price environment and there will be shifting as cbo predicts. a big shift towards a favorable program. for all producers. and that is because the average downue is being ratcheted as we move further and further ahead. so there is a prediction that we will see a shift towards a rc. here ofcan get an idea c program does. they didn'tnue if

have that and if they did, it shows up prominently. these are the payment rate, typically. $100 -- $75-$100 an acre. peanut stands out a lot. happenedecause of what 2012-2014 with caution in the farm bill -- with cotton in the farm bill. base.ost their they could grow any crop and be eligible and we saw an increase in peanut acreage. acreage is following the payment. and that probably will continue to be a big issue, again.

the cotton base has been turned into the generic base. is a divisionhere between what is planted and what the support is based upon. it varies from commodity to commodity. that is the whole of it. matchetoric doesn't the economic facts. are differences among individual farms but the trends are not as is what we have heard. in fact, we are back to almost normal market conditions in general. commoditiesrops and that farms produce operate differently from the average so you will hear from dr. sumner about the dairy industry which is a little bit different than the peanut industry. i'm going to talk briefly about

crop insurance. many have heard me wax long and hard. i will make a blunt statement. the cropill not by insurance offered unless it is heavily subsidized and the evidence is compelling and this slide shows it. 1990's and going not paying the costs associated with the programming, only 20% of eligible acreage signed up. when subsidies were increased to 5% in 1994, we did see a surge in enrollment. and in 2000 when subsidies were increased to the current average fair of 62% of the premium, we see an even bigger search. so now close to 90% of all

acreage is insured. farmers offered the following. every year, down a dollar and you can expect to dollars back. las vegas odds if you could get them. and if we could all get them we would be fleeing from the room. we know something else about crop insurance. it essentially transfers risk from the manager of a company, the farm, to the taxpayer. because the farm will take a riskier bet. land and thegile farmer gets the upside and the taxpayer pays the downside. that is just the way it is. what irony of the program is that roughly 30% of the taxpayer cost float across insurance companies.

other comments. roughlyops account for 65% of the total subsidies that we pay. exactly the same that we see large subsidies on the program's barry was talking about. that was corn and soybean. so it is no wonder that from , they arendiana strongly supportive of crop insurance. not surprising at all. rice also att and a big chunk to the total payment. the rest of the commodities get 6%-7%. not the losso is ratio that the risk management agency wants to talk about. they want to look at the total

amount of money going into the insurance pool, so that is the .armer contribution .8 --at is running at something like that? so legitimately, from their perspective, the agency would an actuary style program. it shows payments out relative to farmer payments in. so that is the normal actuarial management era. 2.1%.n see that at you do make money off crop insurance. that is what you do. is there a risk management program? yes. because you are paid when your x price is relatively low but it is fairly substantial targeted at crops and you almost

have one class of producers getting most of this money. to revenue subsidies insurance. the harvest price option in 2000 and we saw a surge in the use of revenue coverage, mainly for corn and soybean. which, again, are the crops that are to get a lot of the money out of the program. what about proposals for a formal change in the program? the house agricultural committee has none in effect. or very little. the farm lobbyists claim that the loss of the crop insurance program or any change would be catastrophic. that we he is a claim cannot farm without crop insurance. ask thatway to question is to say, what did

farmers do in the 1980's when crop insurance. and the answer is, they farmed perfectly happy. it wasn't as lucrative. you hear the banks say they wouldn't do it if they didn't have loans. loan rates would be a little bit higher. probably a point higher in interest. riskier for the banks. but the world wouldn't collapse. clearly, some farmers might not survive. because some farms have actually built their entire operation around the fact that crop insurance is heavily subsidized and available to them. they have no land or their a little land. a buy machinery and the rent land. the farms how many of are like that, relatively few.

we have seen the debt-acid ratio. so what is the farm lobby's response to the proposal for any proposal? even miniscule cuts in the program? it is being disguised as the world going to collapse but it is a little bit of an overstatement. there are serious reform proposals that have come out of the house and the senate. not out of the house agriculture committee or the senate agriculture committee. one is the incredibly cadillac version of the insurance. thought thisress insurance ended up with more revenue than the insurance policy in the market than the -- expectedget when to get from the crop. norman'sin congressman bill released a week ago, a 15

percentage point cut. a reduction of the subsidy by a quarter. it is a serious proposal. there is a great deal of fraud and abuse issues associated with that. one proposal is simply to cap insurance subsidies on farms at a maximum. $40,000 has been proposed. to 20,000,lower that relatively few farms would be affected by that cap. and double dipping. the loss programs that barry described are two cover shortfalls in revenue and price. one proposal which should be taken seriously is leading the farmer picking one or the other but not both. light, taxpayers are

paying them for the same lost twice. if you are foolish enough to let me do that, legally, i will do that. a party perspective, is that a good idea? and there have been attempts to introduce payment limitation criteria, making individuals who amounts in eligible for payment. not being taken seriously at all by the house agriculture committee and they're not being taken seriously at this point by the senate agriculture committee. although recently, the chairman of the senate agriculture committee has commented that he has concerns about whether subsidies can be retained at their current level. with that, we move on and i pass the clicker to dr. david. you for allowing us to

do this work. what i am going to do first is give some stylized facts and context for the sugar market in the u.s., looking at the quantity produced and consumed. thethen i will move on to key features of the sugar program, looking at the impact and then one slide on reform. so i too can see on the left side, you have the production of sugar and the sugar equivalent metric. in metric terms and sugar production in the u.s. is aided to have million metric tons -- is a .5 million metric tons -- million metric tons. millione is around 11 metric tons. the import is making the

.ifference between the two million metric tons. so the prices. on the left-hand side, you can see the data on prices. shows the u.s. price in the equivalent world price, it you can see that the u.s. price opposed to the import price, the user of sugar for the producer of the sugar. you can see that each around the problems managing the make the price go to the heart. last, $250 per

metric ton. an equivalent with the subsidy going to sugar industry in the and the facts of the producer. , i will talk trade -- mexico trade , you can see it ramping up when it was totally implemented ,he sugar and sports -- imports ,he u.s. and mexico agreement from the to the u.s.. the idea is toam

raise prices to the sugar industry from growers on. with no explicit agreements, the food processors use their product in candy or bakery industries use the sugar and sweeteners quite intensely and pay the high price. free elements in the sugar programs, controls on the domestic production and also on trade. we describe those one by one. in terms of imports we have valueses that have fixed

, based on history of trade flows from the list of entities in 1981, and not currently based from those countries. brazil and thailand do not have access to the markets, very low or sometimes sero-import ariffs.ist -- unfilled,ose they go

they could be better managed for sure. mexico the increasing level of that mexico isut very competitive worldwide on andmarkets, but domestic created opportunity to export to the u.s.. there was a political push to try to put the expansion of , they found they were contemplating duty from mexico to the u.s.. leverageeated some with a suspension contravening that's whatffs,

took place so there is a phobia managed by the usda that only so much sugar comes into the u.s.. -- u.s. loan rains and world market rates, a system -- maybe some of you are too young to remember, it is more responsive >> of the controls, first of all there is quantity for the countries, supposed to be no less than 85% of domestic use. it rarely goes that high.

quantities spread across straits -- states, a sugar refiner, it is cumbersome in terms of production. even though it is not binding, we are reaching the 85% of the domestic use, it can distort production. some of those producers can be , all thecient producers may not fulfill the sugar so there are some ways to allocate but it is pretty cumbersome and bureaucratic.

that is based on the product and looking at productive use. sugarad right there was a price support system, it is based on the actual sugar, the rates for sugar beats and refined sugar which involves , the cane sugar pound.tes 18.5 cents per has togar is raw sugar be refined. the difference between the two cents think about five for the cost of refining.

if the ada is not successful in managing the program and price controls, then sugar producers can be put on loan, and get rid -- the flexibility fda in 2013 they million with$59 the auctioning of that sure -- sugar, a bargain basement price. in terms of the impact of the , users in them metric ton multiplied by eight

ton, wepie -- by metric they areut incentive, transferred to the producer so get more thangar a billion a year, more than $2 times thee year you $2.2nd it gives billion transferred from

producers. in terms of the increasing cost it is not bigll enough to call your senators enraged about the cost of the sugar program. it is the typical situation, a is -- iss is optimistic. is 10 ---f losses it

10,000 or 20,000 job loss. those are -- most of those jobs , prooft in the industry , between mexico and the u.s. were companies try to update the cost of the sugar program. that is a diversion across the books. 20,000 jobs per year. per rates could be lower

pound for sugar. long-termer to the evolution of the world sugar price, it limits it to $.18 per pound. could be program -- costly to taxpayers. proposals on the trade floors in making sure that the use ratio is high enough for u.s. production and the markets , not so top -- tight enough supply on the market.

place.'s could take the sugarg-term, ,rogram should be removed transfer from users to producers should be removed. with disappear because brazil and thailand and other countries could import and exports could export and import more effectively. one can think of a permutation. of several years. , changing in the

, thoseugar markets prices are supposed to stay and there is important viable sugar industry. >> thank you. now we will go on to the front topic of milk and some other issues. i think you have seen enough numbers and charts and tables. i am not going to do that. i have a lot of those and -- in a paper. i was just up on the hill talking about dairy policy. three days later, the congress did just the opposite of what i was talking about. paper was given about compton, -- cotton comes same thing happened.

it's appropriate we're talking about foreign policy. of view, american farmers are the most enterprising people i know. it's not just that they work is that theymean are constantly engaged in innovati, a creativity ov initiative and --. that's what we mean by enterprise is american farmers. i want to start off -- i want to talk about dairy. u.s. farmothing about programs including dairy that transfers money to low income families. that is not what they are about. way.are not designed that they have not been since maybe 1935, but they weren't very good

at it then either. and they are not doing that now. unlike some of my colleagues, i one of the good things that is being proposed in this farm bill is removing the fiction of things like payment limits. sense does it make if you are going to subsidize an industry. if you want to transfer money to farmers, ship it to real farmers, don't fiddle around the edges. when it comesrgue to dairy, it's probably because we are trying to target things to what i would think favorite members of an industry. industrial policy, picking winners was bad enough for industries as a whole but to pick up favorite firms within that industry because they

happen to have a better relationship with the -- members morengress just seems dangerous than most. that's what i want to talk about. iss idea of enterprise nowhere in agriculture not more evident than the dairy industry. in a piece are given in january, i talked a lot about the productivity growth and competitiveness, real transformation of the u.s. dairy industry over the last two or three decades, from being an industry that had needed protection, not unlike sugar. now we are a major exporter of very products to the rest of the world because an industry that hastransformed itself and

done that by dragging policy along with it. much of what washington has done specific to dairy policy has gotten in the way of that. the industry has not only transformed itself, it transformed itself against the odds given the policy that they have faced. this is not just the farmers, it is also the processing industry. like sugar, processing goes together with the dairy farm industry. closely thather so 80% of the milk and the u.s. is processed by farm co-ops. it is a remarkable linkage there. much of that productivity growth has happened in the mid-west and the east.

it caught up with the west when it comes to production per cow and cost of production numbers. there has been a decline in the number of cows roughly flat. kaus goes up which means the dairy consumption is justg, it is not consumption in the u.s., not fluid milk consumption, that is partly due to policy. discourageolicy to people from drinking milk. my friends in the allman is this businesst's -- almond think that's ok. alman and and soybean milk is

puny part of the -- business. the challenges that allman did -- as a matter of government policy i discourage you from drinking pure milk. at the same time, we have productivity at the far growth, we have innovative products but we are against the odds. reenergizedon that the new york industry and had a lot to do with growth in idaho. the industry there has innovators. said, if you are producing for washington it has to be dry milk powder of a

, typicallycification not the ones that the market really wants. bill isthe 2014 farm the right stuff. supports,ed price they paid high prices -- the government buying products. we still talk about a case full of cheese that sat there until it rotted. or we dump them on markets around the world. nobody wants to go back to those days. what i will suggest to you in a couple of minutes is there is no reason to keep today's policy, we will say why did we keep those for so long, let's get rid

of them. we used to job dairy products on the world martex. it lasted for a half a dozen outmoded,n it was probably do not make much sense to start with but it stayed on the books until 2014. we got rid of it. the milk program, milc. that was when there were payments when prices fell below whatever happened to be the congressional dictates of the time. do a lot of did not sense.

a $40iry industry is billion industry, you cannot provide 40% out of the federal budget. like we used to do for peanuts or content a decade ago. those kind of moneys aren't ever going to be there, and instead we reckon the industry with lots of complexity without much money and wealth. we have a lot of rules that we having and there without much effect. we do that against an industry that has transformed itself. i have argued that it is time for the policy to catch up with the industry. not all of the outmoded policies were eliminated. with the 2014 bill, and the 2018 bill still has the opportunity to complete the job. a mate major commercial exporter

updated -- dairy products and get we still have a lot of tar iffs. it goes on for pages. nobody -- it doesn't do anybody much good. in general, for trade policy, it puts us on the side of the people we don't want to be on the side of. my view is white that stuff out. pressure on in china. if you want to have a trade policy that points to other places being inappropriately protectionist, it is harder to do that one thank you rss set trade barriers -- the u.s. has

set trade barriers. than sugar.erent the u.s. is not very good at producing sugar. we are a significant producer. for dairy we are and importer. typeunds like a stalinist of program, that is because it is. there's no reason for me to go into the details of these program. there are only two people that understand the u.s. marking order program and they disagree with each other. there are various versions of that old joke but the point is

there is no reason to try to explain these programs here, they set prices for individual products and they differ throughout the country. they changed it a lot because transformed, the point is, there is no reason to try to dictate those things out of washington dc. the regulators at the fda, there's my time -- i'm almost on. -- i'm almost done. amsspect my friends over at and they do a great job of managing a program minimizing in thed of distortions market given what congress tells them to deal with. they are pulling levers and

pushing strings and all kinds of try to manipulate the dairy market to not screw up the market very much, but they can't compete. complexities- there'no degree of gulatoryfft, even with people with great it -- expertise in trying to do it. is the budget act together with the house proposal on dairy go in the wrong directions, they don't do any reforms. the one place they changed milching is changing the program. which they have now pronounced -- propose to marcheshe name is the -- margin between feed prices

and milk prices to make it a , it ismore complicated free insurance up to a certain amount of a margin for the first now up to 5 million pounds of milk, that's about 220 cows or so but far below the average for them amount of milk produced in the country. put most of the competitive very parts in the country. the dairies and the consumers who are willing to pay a high price but that has nothing to do with a government program.

the final point on the mpp, it doesn't do -- the commercial industry any good, it subsidizes that is selling expense of milk to people willing to pay for special characteristics. it makes the industry in general less productive and less efficient. it is time point is to stop tinkering with outmoded programs. it is time to let u.s. agriculture do what it does best, mp in world markets and be efficient. reforms we are talking about here would do that, and the industry would be able to deal with the industry

as there will be in agriculture, ups and down, the industry will be able to deal with those. the parts of u.s. agriculture that we have talked about here, the cats all, poor industry pork industry. overran by an average of two minutes. we are academics. what else do you expect. we have time for a few questions. -- the mikeuntil my arrives. jerry? the lawmakers are saying that

farmers are telling them they are not interested in this farm bill, they are interested in the trump administration views on trade and ethanol. retaliatory tariffs . i'm wondering if the trump administration policies have affected your thinking and also what you think about the trump administration proposal to use the credit corporation policies to payoffs if it turns out there are tariffs that cause them to learn's money? to lose money? i'm not going to talk about corn and beans. nobody has any interest in that. tuesday in front of the ,afornia brd of agriculture

we had farmers i commodity groups there and they are concerned about the chinese tarif it is a terrorists concern. fs. even if the tariffs don't happen, the rhetoric has effects and we remember even several months ago when we started talking about nafta, we asked for 40% of our dairy products to mexico. when we started talking about pull out,things to reasonable business people in mexico got on the phone with someone in new zealand -- we love your california milk powder int your government may get

the way. i think the rhetoric matters as well as we don't have to wait for the tariffs to hit. nds andlies to almos wine. >> does it affect the farm bill? >> let me talk about soybeans. first we already have a plethora of programs, corn and soybean produces almost all of them. 90% already have revenue insurance through crop insurance is sheer. -- this year. they also participate in this high cost program that are designed to pay off when revenues decline. a comfyeady have

cushion support system for when there are adverse movements in the yields. it is difficult for me to see why you would introduce a special program related to the problem it face. have a legitimate beef with the trump administration. trade wars are a bad idea. they will i be earlier rate a small set of voters just to get a particular elected group of individuals out of a hole. it is not a good basis for policy. the right approach is not to go down with a trade war. i don't know of any serious economist think that a trade war

is serious economists do not believe that. imperial -- empirical evidence is devastating or the threat of trade wars. next question? the gentleman here? hello. do you think that the -- then the commodity programs? john they want to address the european policies.

the payments as they were initially designed from an economic point of view it became politically untenable in this 2014 farm bill to make .hese payments it is interesting that we have and away from this support the eu has gone toward it. subject it is no longer to the minimalist exclusion. the basin yield updating provisions start to weaken this allowedause growers are

to update on the basis of what they were just doing. we may see that again on this farm bill. i think you have written a paper on the issue. of the effects -- we never fully decoupled. , weou can look at the eu have gone back great and you have been progressing, in the sugar markets where the sugar in the eu has been very -- regaining efficiency in europe in the sugar industry. there is a lot of interest in crop insurance now. last year i attended and eu on riskp -- workshop

management. shift money away into crop insurance. the single farm payment is far less of a problem than dipping into farm insurance. -- crop insurance. the effects of the direct payments from the u.s. on production are very modest. if you remove this updating it is a nonstory policy. >> next question? >> sweetener users association. the last question a regard sugar

, have any of you done any analysis on the income transfer of sugar producers first is what we have versus other commodities? transfer that i small, 10-$12 per person. >> it's an interesting question. -- program, get 47% of their income, mainly because of brilliant policies

setting into the farm bill. if you are jimmy carter's inheritor, you would like this a lot. a taxpayer, not so much. so that is substantial. about 90% of corn's revenue comes from risk coverage. you have to watch what they are getting out of the crop insurance. corn benefits from the program. if you go to sugar, the price of sugar is 50% higher than it would otherwise be. that puts it in the peanut range more than the soybean range. it is very heavily subsidized program.

the subsidy does not come in a government check. wallet,,out of your buying chocolate for your girlfriend on valentine's day. very specific question. most of these programs we have talked about our taxpayers. the u.s. price is slightly lower. are not being directed. you arehe reasons, talking about the 2014 farm bill if you went back a decade or so we used to have a peanut program that was much like the sugar barriers.e had trade what consumers paid for here in the u.s. the consumers used to pay for

the peanut program, used to be free in terms of a federal budget. to get the kind of support they were getting before, it takes a lot of money per farm. aei program, i was impressed by the person representing the sugar folks, he held up his packet of sugar and said i can get it for free. i wish i would have thought of that. it is true when john made his point that sugar packets are still not going to be very expensive. if you charge three bucks for coffee you can give away packets of sugar. does costar program

real men your free -- manufacturing jobs in the united states. hear grandiose claims from the policy group about how these jobs are created. those numbers are somewhat imaginary in my view. formers --bese farmers making sure they get land. you cannot shape the nature of differentcan grow a crop or use it for a different for a -- or use it different purpose. these stories are imaginary stories. ofe of the numbers sort boggle the mind.

this issue of payment limits, am i being critical of the growers. -- the way the program is designed. don't tell me we are saving small family farms with these large payments. i had a friend who was an attorney -- his specialty was getting around payment limits. he told me this 10 years ago, do not sign -- there is not a payment limit that i cannot be. what john said about these payments -- these limits not being binding is true. whether you like it or not, it

is a different question. the fact that we can have limits -- paymentsubsidies or subsidies. none of us blame individual thatrs for these policies give them legal opportunities to acquire taxpayer dollars. i had a different perspective about seeking those policies in the first place. lobbyists using campaign contribution to obtain programs that benefit a small number of people. so there is a distinction there. >> what are these programs intended to do, that is the fundamental question night you have to ask. >> we have time for one more

question. who is the oldest? guarded, please. i have from the brazilian cotton producers association. aside from any just a sensible policy change towards getting yield coverage back, what are some of the other sensible thislines, maybe not for upcoming farm bill but for the future would be appropriate for the federal government to finance or partially finance in terms of creating sensible and be --framework for may the major commodities but other

agricultural products that people want here in the u.s.. policy, therational one policy that i think all of us would agree has been beneficial, the one use of funds that has been beneficial is the investment in public r and d. there's no ambiguity that the investment hasat been substantial. so that is one place. depending on your view, i would argue that you can make some statements for the aid programs linked to seriously adverse weather events. comef yield loss for crops out of weather-related events.

program based not on the individual farm, but let's -- so that your loss does it , resulte your payment in problematic behaviors. if you had a catastrophic event and if you are in this area, let's make you good to some degree, not 100%. why would one do that for any other industry. >> there are lots of industries that face random weather shocks. have -- we do have a very viable range of risk management options that exist, i

am convinced and i have debated this, they would come up with a lot of innovations. --re are private health and insurance opportunities out there. , don't see the justification you talk about systemic risk and private markets can handle that, they are handling much more systematic met -- risk than you see here. they make a public data , you doe for mass usda a great job getting the information out there. as well as any private concern, but i am not persuaded even in that case. you can make an argument about flood insurance as well. essentially, i agree with

that. the government has its fingers in a whole bunch of agricultural pies that get in the way of innovation, improvements and efficiency. earlier,ing mentioned it is true before we have this big insurance program, we also , every time relief why buy insurance because you are going to get a check if you have a real loss. individuals, that were adequately covered in some congress did not have the discipline to refrain from writing those checks periodically.

was used to justify crop insurance to some extent. >> we have overrun our schedule time, the panelists will be around for a little while. thank you for your patience and your questions. youook forward to seeing all at other ai events. oficulture is one present gdp. thank you. [applause]

>> later this afternoon on c-span nasa officials briefed reporters on the space agency's mission to mars which is scheduled to launch a saturday. that's at 4 p.m. eastern live on c-span. this evening, a conversation on mental illness on the criminal justice system. we will hear from judge steve lightman. we truly had a serious mental health crisis in my community, we have one of the highest percentages of people of any 190 in the united states,

7000 adults and 55,000 children who live in my community suffer with very serious mental illnesses every day. when you are from the great your of florida where jails become the psychiatric facilities for your straight. at the time we had more than 12 --ple with serious people -- we aref our nine spending a hundred $50 million year to warehouse people in conditions you would not let your dog in. people with mental illness in my jail in most jails were staying for to eight times longer. learned islessons i this is not just a local

problems but a state one as well. it is the silent epidemic of our times, but if you work in the criminal justice system there is nothing silent about this epidemic. you hear their screams and their cries every day. is that oursson community health systems in this country are fragmented, painfully under resourced, they do not reflect modern science, and they need to be overhauled. can see this entire discussion from new york university law school and how mentally ill people end up in jails rather than psychiatric facilities. that's at eight eastern on c-span. connect with c-span to personalize the information you get from us. .org/tonight and

sign up for the e mail. it has the most updated prime times dental. word for word to see the most interesting video highlight. book tv newsletter is an insiders look at upcoming authors and book festivals. and the american history tv newsletter with the upcoming programming exploring our nation's past, visit c-span.org/tonight & up today. supreme court justice clarence thomas recently sat down for a conversation about his upbringing, his decision to 1991d law school, and his confirmation to the supreme court from the law library in congress, this is just under one hour. >> good afternoon.