1. Sub-Topic 1: How to go about this exercise the steps

• Please use a header called Sub-TOPIC 1
• Begin by reading Chapters 1, 2, and 7 (check the reading guidance in your modules for Weeks 2 and 3, as well as REQUIRED READINGS IN THE TEXTBOOK segment in this document).
• Now summarize the ideas in the articles (limit quotes, and do not cite or attach a bibliography).

Discuss if it is important to increase or maintain farm support, and whether such support should be balanced by reducing income support (Trump administration initiatives: please see the readings below; I have excerpted and highlighted some items from the news stories and analysis, so that students do not have to feel responsible for reading all the stories in depth. Students may read the highlights and explore some links to understand the narratives.) This discussion segment should be the longest section on Topic1, and should engage the ideas of SUBSIDIES, EFFICIENCY and EQUITYSub-TOPIC 1: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: 2020 FARM SUPPORT AND FOOD-STAMPS (feel free to use short quotes from these articles but limit the quotes)

Trump's new bailout program for farmers and ranchers, explained

Trump wants to bail out America's farmers while continuing to push food stamp cuts.

ttps://www.vox.com/2020/4/18/21226253/trump-farm-bailout-food-stamps-snap

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/4/18/21226253/trump-farm-bailout-food-stamps-snap

Farmers in Montgomery, Minnesota, in 2019. President Trump recently announced a $19 billion bailout program for farmers and ranchers.Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images

President Donald Trumpannounced at a White House briefingon Friday that his administration will use $19 billion in funds already appropriated by Congress to aid farmers and ranchers during thecoronavirus crisis.

"The program will include direct payments to farmers, as well as mass purchases of dairy, meat and agricultural produce to get that food to the people in need,"Trump saidduring the briefing.

TheCoronavirus Food Assistance Program, as the new initiative is called, will involve $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue explained at the press conference. Initial funds will come through $6.5 billion in existing funding as part of theCommodity Credit Corporation, a New Deal-era subagency of the US Department of Agriculture tasked with stabilizing the agricultural sector through purchases, sales, and direct payments. Those CCC funds will be supplemented with an additional $9.5 billion in coronavirus fundsauthorized by Congress through the CARES Act.

In addition to the $16 billion in direct payments, Perdue announced, "the USDA will be purchasing $3 billion in fresh produce, dairy, and meat products to be distributed to Americans in need through our food bank networks, as well as other community and faith-based organizations."

The new program comes after numerous reports that farmers are dumping milk, abandoning vegetables ready for harvest, and otherwise taking massive losses as they try to stay afloat amid the massive recession. "In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits," theNew York Times' David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkeryreported on April 11. "An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil."

"Having to dump milk, or plow under vegetables ready to market is not only financially distressing, but it's heartbreaking as well to those who produce them," Perdue said at the press conference. "This program will not only provide direct financial relief to our farmers and ranchers, Mr. President, but will allow for the purchase and distribution of our agricultural abundance in this country to help our fellow Americans in need."

Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee responsible for agricultural funding, releasedmore details on the new program. Most of the funding, per his press release, will go to farmers of livestock: $5.1 billion to cattle farmers, $2.9 billion to dairy farmers, and $1.6 billion to pig farmers. The payments will be limited to $125,000 per commodity and $250,000 per the individual or entity who's benefiting, to limit funds for massive agribusinesses. They will be calculated as the combination of 85 percent of price losses from January 1 to April 15, 2020, and 30 percent of expected losses for the next two quarters after April 15.

That will cushion some of the blow, but still leave farmers underwater, especially considering expected losses post-April 15 that will only be partially reimbursed.

At the same time, Trump and Perdue want to cut food stamps

The $3 billion in direct food provision to food banks comes despite Trump and Perdue's efforts to slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as "food stamps." In 2018, Perdue proposed a rulekicking 755,000 people off food stampsby tightening work requirements. The rule was finalizedlast December, and wasset to take effect on April 1,but afederal judge stayed it, citing coronavirus concerns.

In 2019,Perdue proposed an even bigger cutby suggesting a change to "categorical eligibility" rules that would no longer allow people benefiting from other safety net programs, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), to be automatically enrolled in food stamps. Thatrule has yet to be finalized.

Most recently, the administration and Congressfailed to include an increase in SNAP benefitsas part of the CARES Act stimulus legislation, which could have served as a complement tostimulus checksandenhanced unemploymentfor the poorest Americans as the recession worsens.

The Trump administration has said its rule changes to SNAP are expected to reduce spending by $50 billion over 10 years, or about $5 billion annually. That would swamp the $3 billion in food allocated to food banks as part of this new initiative to aid farmers.

Advocates for the food stamps program, likeCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities senior fellow Dottie Rosenbaum, have urged the White House and Department of Agriculture to stop pursuing their rule changes cutting SNAP, especially as more Americans need food assistance now than did when the rules were proposed. So far, despite their comments on the need to support food stamps, Trump and Perdue have not followed that advice."

"Reformed Welfare Program Effective During Great Recession

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TANF_in_recession_release.pdf

Sky Did Not Fall: Safety Net Programs with Work Requirements Prevented 20 Million from Falling into Poverty

When the Great Recession hit in 2007, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, created under the 1996 welfare reform law and successful in lowering welfare rolls and increasing work rates among low-income single mothers, was strongly criticized for not providing benefits to more families as unemployment rates skyrocketed, but new research finds that TANF was more responsive to the recession than critics have claimed.

In "The Responsiveness of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program during the Great Recession," Brookings Senior Fellow Ron Haskins and Professor of Social Work Vicky Albert of University of Nevada at Las Vegas, along with Kimberly Howard, produce three studies that closely examine TANF performance during the Great Recession. They find that the TANF caseload rose in nearly every state as unemployment increased during the recession. "