The collapse in hog prices in the fall of 1998 has renewed interest in using insurance as a means of providing an affordable safety net to U.S. farmers. One option that has received attention is to expand the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop insurance program to include livestock producers. Because the ongoing financial crisis in the hog sector was not caused by production or disease problems, it is apparent that producers could have benefited from either price insurance or revenue insurance.

The CARD staff has recently been expanding information available via the web. In addition to information about CARD divisions, activities, staff, and listings of publications, the site now includes the full texts of briefing papers and working papers published since November 1998, and recent staff reports. We will continue to provide full texts of papers online as they are published.

Crop and livestock producers in the United States have been faced with one of the most challenging fall and winter seasons in recent memory. The price of corn fell to the lowest level in a decade, and soybeans, which had been buoyed by the price of oils, recently succumbed to decade lows also. Pork producers struggled through the worst December on record when the price of barrows and gilts fell to Depression era prices. Cattle producers, while seeing declining cattle numbers and after running in the red for more than a year, dealt with stiff competition from pork and poultry producers who where cranking out record production. They have been unable to turn a profit until recently, partly because of larger than expected beef production caused by record slaughter weights and overall large levels of meat available.

John Beghin, associate professor of economics, is the Trade and Agricultural Policy (TAP) Division head at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD). He began working at CARD in January 1999.