Voices advocating for common sense reform to our nation’s agricultural policy are apparently being heard.

Today the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its 2018 Farm Bill and Legislative Principles document. Secretary Perdue has emphasized that the document is the administration’s position on the farm bill and should be used as guidance when lawmakers look to reauthorize the bill this year.

If you didn’t read closely, you might think Taxpayers for Common Sense wrote a part of it. The very first bullet states USDA support for legislation that will “provide a farm safety net that helps American farmers weather times of economic stress without distorting markets or increasing shallow loss payments.” Following this common sense statement is bullet number two to “promote a variety of innovative crop insurance products and changes, enabling farmers to make sound production decisions and to manage operational risk.”

Here at TCS, we have long advocated for necessary reforms to make the agricultural safety net more efficient, less costly, and less distortive of the market.

One reform includes eliminating unnecessary income entitlement programs, which sends tax dollars to agricultural businesses when they experience a “shallow loss” in expected income or prices. Created in the 2014 Farm Bill, these programs have cost $18 billion more than promised, yet overwhelmingly benefit very few producers with 72 percent of farmers getting nothing.

We have also advocated reforming the highly subsidized crop insurance program.  This overly generous program, in which taxpayers subsidize insurance policies that guarantee producers make as much as 85 percent of their anticipated revenue, concentrates benefits on a handful of crops. While there are 130 crops that can technically eligible for some type of insurance coverage, the overwhelming majority of the cost of the program is due to providing revenue insurance policies for corn, soybeans, and wheat, which received $4.458 billion in crop insurance premium subsidies in 2017.

That’s an eye-popping 73 percent of the total amount paid.

That’s why we’ve focused on ways of injecting market forces into the program and support reining in the most market distorting aspects, like the Harvest Price Option (HPO). Under HPO policies a business’ taxpayer-subsidized revenue guarantee is automatically adjusted higher if prices at harvest are higher than expected during planting. Taxpayers just can’t afford this type of policy.

It is time for Congress to have a healthy debate on the upcoming farm bill. For too long, past farm bills have been written behind closed doors with only a few voices at the table. This time around, enough people, including the USDA, are prioritizing reasonable policies that better serve the interests of the entire agriculture sector, including consumers who use agricultural goods, communities impacted by agricultural production, and federal taxpayers footing the bill.

Taxpayers, and farmers, deserve nothing less than a farm safety net that is cost effective, transparent, responsive, and accountable. We’re encouraged that USDA shares this vision and hope the agriculture committees follow their lead.