Farm Program Selection Using a Risk Programming Approach

U.S. crop producers have historically managed risk by participating in federal price and income support programs. While early farm programs focused on reducing agricultural output, programs in the last two decades have become structured more like insurance. Calculating payments from current programs has become more involved and deciding which programs will best fit a producer’s needs is, unfortunately, not always straightforward. The choice of which Title I farm program to enroll in is modeled as a quadratic integer programming problem. This framework is used to determine optimum program selection for representative upland cotton production in Hale County, Texas.