2002 Farm Bill Decision Tool

A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet has been developed to identify which of the four alternatives for updating acres and yields contained in the 2002 Farm Bill likely will result in the highest government payments. The four alternatives are:

  1. Do not update acres or yields,
  2. Update acres, use program yields,
  3. Update acres, use "70% Diff" method to update yields for calculating counter-cyclical payments, and
  4. Update acres, use "93.5" method to update yields for calculating counter-cyclical payments.

More detail on these alternatives is provided in a Farm Economics: Facts and Opinion article (click here to see the paper).

The program was developed by William Edwards at Iowa State University. A database of Illinois yields has been added so that the Iowa version is applicable to Illinois.

Illinois Farm Bill Decision Tool. Clicking on this link will download the Illinois version of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Save the worksheet on your machine to maintain your own copy of the Tool. The current version is 1.0. Future modifications to the program will be placed here.

Iowa Farm Bill Decision Tool. Clicking on this link will download the Iowa version of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Save the worksheet on your machine to maintain your own copy of the Tool.

Description. Clicking on this link will provide an explanation and example of the Farm Bill Decision Tool's use.

Input form. Clicking on this link will download an Acrobat Reader version of an input form. This form contains the information that must be completed to run the Farm Bill Decision Tool. A Microsoft Excel version also is available. Click here for the Microsoft version.