Government Payments to Cotton Under the Agricultural Act of 2014 and Other Supplemental Programs

From 2013 to 2019, the U.S. cotton sector experienced dramatic shifts in domestic agricultural policy. Partially due to a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute brought by Brazil, cotton was omitted from Title I - commodity program payments, thus excluding cotton producers from Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) or Price Loss Coverage (PLC) payments under the Agricultural Act of 2014. Instead of participation in ARC and PLC, cotton producers were able to sign up for Stacked Income Protection (STAX) – a crop insurance product exclusively for cotton – annually for the life of the Farm Bill and receive Cotton Transition Payments (C-TAP) for 2014 and 2015, based on a farms cotton base acres in 2013. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 reversed course and inserted cotton into the commodity program through the seed cotton program. For the 2018 crop year, cotton producers were eligible to receive ARC and PLC payments determined by each farm’s seed cotton base. Additional payments to the cotton sector were initiated for the 2016 crop year through the Cotton Ginning Cost Share Program (CGCS) and the 2018 crop through the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). This analysis spatially analyzes aggregated payments to the cotton sector for the 2014-2018 crop years for the above programs and the government portion of the federal crop insurance premium. Additionally, the analysis examines ramifications of the seed cotton sign up and examines future payments to cotton producers under the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018.