We use data from the Kansas Farm Management Association to estimate the impact of crop insurance liability and insurance indemnities on farm debt. Subsidized crop insurance may increase farms' financial risk through a mechanism known as “risk balancing.” Previous findings in support of risk balancing may suffer from bias due to unobservable farm characteristics and simultaneity in insurance and debt decisions. Employing a simultaneous equations model with farm fixed effects, we find no statistical relationship between crop insurance liability and debt, calling into question the risk balancing hypothesis in federal crop insurance. We show that large insurance indemnity payments reduce farms' reliance on short‐term debt, but leave the total debt level unchanged.

Past research found agricultural producers' conditional responses during the growing season are important adaptations to weather and other stochastic events. Failing to recognize these responses overstates the risks confronting producers and understates their ability to respond to adverse circumstances. Dynamic programming (DP) provides a means for determining optimal long-term crop management plans. However, most applications in the literature base their analysis on annual time steps with fixed strategies within the year, effectively ignoring conditional responses during the year. We suggest an alternative approach that captures the strategic responses within a cropping season to random weather variables as they unfold, reflecting farmers' ability to adapt to weather realizations. We illustrate our approach by applying it to a typical cereal farm in Karak, Jordan. The results show that including conditional within-year responses to weather reduces the frequency of fallowing by 23% and increases expected income by 9%.JEL classifications: C61, Q12, Q57

Grain supply is the joint effect of both area and yield; however, research often targets either one or the other. The research presented here estimates the complete supply elasticity of grains using novel approaches to approximate producers’ price and weather expectations on both yield and acres planted. The results from this approach combining acreage and yield show the negative impact of expanded production on average yields and the supply response. Additionally, the research extends previous methods of approximating producers’ price expectations through the use of historical basis prices.

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