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The Reclamation Act of 1902 is a United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as a strong precursor to this act. The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.
In-situ conservation is the on-site conservation or the conservation of genetic resources in natural populations of plant or animal species, such as forest genetic resources in natural populations of Teagan species. This process protects the inhabitants and ensures the sustainability of the environment and ecosystem.
Conservation agriculture (CA) can be defined by a statement given by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as “a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment”.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is the statistical branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System. NASS has 12 regional offices throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and a headquarters unit in Washington, D.C.. NASS conducts hundreds of surveys and issues nearly 500 national reports each year on issues including agricultural production, economics, demographics and the environment. NASS also conducts the United States Census of Agriculture every five years.
The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, known informally as the Freedom to Farm Act, the FAIR Act, or the 1996 U.S. Farm Bill, was the omnibus 1996 farm bill that, among other provisions, revises and simplifies direct payment programs for crops and eliminates milk price supports through direct government purchases.
The agricultural policy of the United States is composed primarily of the periodically renewed federal U.S. farm bills. The Farm Bills have a rich history which initially sought to provide income and price support to US farmers and prevent them from adverse global as well as local supply and demand shocks. This implied an elaborate subsidy program which supports domestic production by either direct payments or through price support measures. The former incentivizes farmers to grow certain crops which are eligible for such payments through environmentally conscientious practices of farming. The latter protects farmers from vagaries of price fluctuations by ensuring a minimum price and fulfilling their shortfalls in revenue upon a fall in price. Lately, there are other measures through which the government encourages crop insurance and pays part of the premium for such insurance against various unanticipated outcomes in agriculture.
In the United States, the Acreage Reduction Program (ARP) is a no-longer-authorized annual cropland retirement program for wheat, feed grains, cotton, or rice in which farmers participating in the commodity programs were mandated to idle a crop-specific, nationally-set portion of their base acreage during years of surplus. The idled acreage was devoted to a conserving use. The goal was to reduce supplies, thereby raising market prices. Additionally, idled acres did not earn deficiency payments, thus reducing commodity program costs. ARP was criticized for diminishing the U.S. competitive position in export markets. The 1996 farm bill did not reauthorize ARPs. ARP differed from a set-aside program in that under a set-aside program reductions were based upon current year plantings, and did not require farmers to reduce their plantings of a specific crop.
In United States federal agriculture legislation, the Agricultural Act of 1970 initiated a significant change in commodity support policy.
The Agricultural Market Transition Act (AMTA) — Title I of the 1996 farm bill — allowed farmers who had participated in the wheat, feed grain, cotton, and rice programs in any one of the 5 years prior to 1996 to enter into 7-year production flexibility contracts for 1996-2002. Total national production flexibility contract payments for each fiscal year were fixed in the law. The AMTA allowed farmers to plant 100% of their total contract acreage to any crop except fruits and vegetables, and receive a full payment. Land had to be maintained in agricultural uses. Unlimited haying and grazing and planting and harvesting alfalfa and other forage crops was permitted with no reduction in payments. AMTA commodity support provisions were replaced by the 2002 farm bill, a 6-year farm bill.
In United States agricultural law, a farm’s base acreage is its crop-specific acreage of wheat, corn, grain sorghum, barley, oats, upland cotton, soybeans, canola, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sunflowers, and rice eligible to enroll in the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program (DCP) under the 2002 farm bill. A farmer’s crop acreage base is reduced by the portion of cropland placed in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), but increased by CRP base acreage leaving the CRP. Farmers have the choice of base acreage used to calculate Production Flexibility Contract payments for crop year 2002, or the average of acres planted for crop years 1998 through 2001.
The Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade (FACT) Act of 1990 — P.L. 101-624 was a 5-year omnibus farm bill that passed Congress and was signed into law.
Crop acreage base is a crop-specific measure equal to the average number of acres planted to a particular program crop for a specified number of years. The crop-specific nature of this measurement was important prior to the 1996 farm bill, which adopted an inclusive measure of base acreage and allowed planting flexibility among the program crops. The sum of the crop acreage bases for all program crops on a farm could not exceed the farm acreage. The acreage base was used in determining the number of acres a farmer, under an acreage reduction program, had to remove from normal crop production and devote to conserving uses in order to be eligible for USDA price and income supports.
In United States agricultural policy, the triple base plan, also called the flexible base plan, is a proposal under which farmers who raise program crops would receive program payments only on a certain percentage of their permitted acreage. A producer participating in a federal price support program actually would have three categories of base acres for program purposes:
The Food Security Act of 1985, a 5-year omnibus farm bill, allowed lower commodity price and income supports and established a dairy herd buyout program. This 1985 farm bill made changes in a variety of other USDA programs. Several enduring conservation programs were created, including sodbuster, swampbuster, and the Conservation Reserve Program.
In United States agricultural policy Paid diversion was a program, repealed by the 1996 farm bill, under which farmers were paid to voluntarily take acreage out of production. The diverted land was devoted to approved conservation practices. Unlikeacreage reduction and set-aside programs, participation in a paid diversion program was not normally a condition of eligibility for other support program benefits.
In United States agricultural law, normal crop acreage refers to the acreage on a farm normally devoted to a group of designated crops. When a set-aside program was in effect, a participating farm’s total planted acreage of such designated crops plus set-aside acreage could not exceed the normal crop acreage. The authority for set-asides was eliminated by the 1996 farm bill.
The United States Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 was an omnibus farm bill. The S. 275 legislation was passed by the 95th U.S. Congressional session and signed into law by the 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter on September 29, 1977.
Large scale rice production in the state of Arkansas became a significant industry in the late 19th/early 20th century with its wide scale propagation within the state by entrepreneur W.H. Fuller around 1896. Arkansas has historically been the largest rice producer in the entire United States, and accounted for nearly 45% of U.S. rice production in 2001, as well as just less than half of the total number of acres of rice harvested nationwide. Much of Arkansas' rice is grown in the east-central portion of the state, where it requires nearly three times more the amount of irrigation water than the average eleven inches the region receives during the growing season. In the areas of lowest precipitation, or where weedy red rice is a significant problem, farmers follow a three year, three phase "old rotation" of rice-soybean-soybean. However, most Arkansas rice producers follow a two year, two phase crop rotation of rice following soybeans.
Wheat is produced in almost every state in the United States, and is the principal cereal grain grown in the country. The type and quantity vary between regions. The US is ranked third in production volume of wheat, with almost 58 million tons produced in the 2012–2013 growing season, behind only China and India. The US is ranked first in crop export volume; almost 50% of its total wheat production is exported.
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