The 2018 farm bill is the latest in a history that dates to 1933. Commodity assistance is the only program in all farm bills, but with evolutionary changes. Current farm commodity programs largely make payments to farms, a stark contrast to the 1930s when they limited supply, put a floor under market price, and dampened price increases via public stocks. Crop insurance, which began as an experimental pilot program in 1938, now has its own farm bill title. Almost all commodity and insurance programs have provided assistance based on a calculation specific to an individual commodity's price and/or yield. However, an evolutionary change to whole farm commodity programs may be in its infant stages. They provide assistance for variation in a farm's aggregate revenue across multiple crops. Whole farm experiments currently exist in both the commodity and crop insurance titles. Analysis of a whole farm commodity program finds that its payments differ by year from actual payments made by current commodity programs and are smaller in total.
