Simplifying the farm safety net

While the 2018 Farm Bill allowed producers to choose between Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) annually, those decisions can be quite difficult to make. The purpose of this paper is to explore options for simplifying (or eliminating) the decision between ARC and PLC. Specifically, we examine the cost of (1) giving producers the maximum of ARC and PLC and (2) simply giving producers both ARC and PLC. The results indicate the 10-year cost of implementing either option costs far less than the recent short-term, ad hoc assistance provided to producers over the past few years.