GRAIN RECAPS
Looking back,
forward
then
A&M professor reviews farm bill
implementation, discusses future for crops
U
By Lindsey Bowers
nited Ag recently hosted two meetings featuring Dr. James Richardson, regents professor and
co-director of AFPC at Texas A&M University.
These meetings focused on updates pertaining to
the farm bill, cost of production and the future
of farming. He made many blunt, but factual, statements that
definitely got the room’s attention.
He briefly reviewed the farm bill and it implementation in
14
its first year. He addressed the concern that many had with
respect to ARC vs. PLC.
“Bottom-line for most people in Texas, the low benchmark
due to yields for drought years made ARC less attractive than
PLC. People complaining that PLC didn’t provide payment in
2014 need to look at output again...unless you used USDA’s
very low price forecast we generally said PLC would pay after
the first year,” Richardson said.
From that topic he dove head first into addressing the real