Policy Design Lab: Visualizing and Analyzing U.S. Federal Agricultural, Conservation, and Food Policies

Federal agricultural, conservation and food assistance programs are critical policies for the agricultural and food sectors. Historically, these policies have been reauthorized by the United States Congress every five years. Also known as the Farm Bill, it authorizes four major categories of mandatory spending programs, distributing benefits to those entitled to receive them. These four categories align with the following titles in the Farm Bill: Title I: Commodities; Title II: Conservation; Title XI: Crop Insurance; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under Title IV: Nutrition. We present the Policy Design Lab, a comprehensive web platform for data visualization and analysis of policy data. The core goal is to better inform policymakers, the public and other stakeholders to improve policy understanding, as well as to provide comparative analysis of policy design alternatives and innovations. It provides a powerful tool for designing, considering and evaluating different scenarios by visualizing data and modeling the likely outcomes of the various designs. We describe the main modules of this web platform, the design and development process, and the integration of two models that support policy analysis and design.