This report analyzes the effects of the USDA stabilization program on corn year-end carryover stocks and corn utilization. It also presents data on the cost of the program to the USDA.

The objectives of the program were to stabilize corn and other feed grain utilization and prices and to raise the long-run level of those prices. In pursuit of these objectives, a program of non-recourse loans to farmers on corn sealed in cribs on their farms was undertaken, supplemented later by provisions for purchase agreements and loans stored in commercial warehouses. This stabilization program was backed up in some years by acreage control programs designed to reduce corn production.

The "total realized cost" of the corn price and production programs to the USDA from 1932 to 1955 was $1.3 billion. Most of this consisted of payments under the acreage control program; the cost of the CCC price-support storage operations was only $227 million. Most of this cost was incurred in fiscal 1954 and 1955, when storage stocks were larger than in earlier years. On the basis of the 1955-56 program, it is likely that the cost of CCC corn storage operations in the future will run at about $100 million per year. If the soil bank program is effective in reducing corn production, that may reduce the size of the stocks and thus reduce the cost of the storage operations.