Now the USA followed up with a proposal to cut 60% of their subsidies, and the EU has said it will match and indeed go beyond those American cuts. The EU spends three times as much on farm support as the USA. Japan is also required to cut its subsidies. So are we finally seeing the end of those cursed programs?
However the US plan reaches all the way to 2023. That’s so far into the future no politicians today would have to change anything at all. So is this merely empty gestures and future promises? Also now the French seem to be opposing making further concessions.
Interesting topic, this. Of course my heart is entirely in attempting to break down the hypocrisy of the EU and US forcing developing nations to open their markets up like the thorax of a heart surgery patient, while our own markets are not “protected” so much as surrounded by a metre-thick concrete wall emplaced with machine gun turrets.
But, as ever, there are complications. I consider the number one political issue of the next century to be climate change (as does the Pentagon, incidentally). Moving those Gigatonnes of food around the world requires unbelievable emissions, when there is fertile land right here for us to farm, and we’d effectively have to pay landowners to look after our countryside anyway - “countryside marshalls” or whatever, even if all they do is plant trees, keep roads clear and manage drainage.
So it’s rather a conundrum. We’d like to pay farmers to do something, since otherwise many of them will simply end up on benefits, but doing so might unfairly affect those who might literally die if they don’t sell their stuff to us. One useful card Africa does hold, however, is that the bulk of its exports is not food but petroleum products. Heck, even talking about disrupting or aggressively pricing those exports are enough raise prices and give US politicians serious grief from their electorate.
The major problem with farm subsidies in an ecological perspective is that it skewers the balance of the market thereby making farming of marginal land areas profitable by excessive use of fertilisers. Fertilisers which when washed out cause oxygen death in streams and seas. And land areas which left to themselves would have provided a valuable diversity to the local nature. Farmed fields are much like a desert, with very little diversity of species. If more fields were transformed to other kinds of nature that would greatly help the diversity of European species. As well as creating more recreational areas. As such countryside marshals do a valuable ecological service.
I see no reason to expect farmers will automatically just go unemployed – they’re no less able than the rest of the population, or to expect that the amount of people now employed in farming would go unemployed. Afterall there isn’t that many unemployed horse carriage builders in the EU either. And you seem to think it is a foregone conclusion that there will be less farming in the EU without subsidies. Yet Danish farmers have for ages called for doing away with all subsidies, not because they want to do away with themselves, but because they believe they can compete on the international market and because they want to expand. Danish farmers expect there will be more farming for them without subsidies (and less for unproductive German and French farmers).
I doubt Africa will be able to seriously wield their petrol weapon with any great conviction. They themselves are too dependent on the income there from.
Yes, I largely agree. But note that my environmental concerns were not ecological but climatic: diversity and climate change are different kettles of fish, and it’s no use bringing back all those pleasant woodland creatures if greenhouse emissions (partly from shifting all that vast tonnage of food around the globe) are going to change that ecosystem again in 20 years time anyway. And the more profitable it becomes to farm in developing countries, the more priceless ecosystems will suffer, as evidenced around the shrinking perimeter of every rainforest on Earth.
Still, I guess these ills will continue even without EU and US farm subsidies. So bring on their abolition.
It’s a wonder that the farmers, or the subset of farmers who favour subsidies, managed to acquire such big hand outs, and keep them for so long. As far as I can see they can have next to no allies. The average man ought be opposed as he has to pay more for his food. Liberals must lament the damage it does to 3. World countries and the environment. Free market conservatives must hate the taxes and toll walls and the obstructions to the free market. And farmers themselves are an ever shrinking group. Denmark, an old farming exporting nation, has about 3% of the population occupied as farmers.
So who are all those people wanting to continue farm subsidies? (Except that old fool Jose Bove and the reactionary Attack movement)
I don’t know that I’m 100% in favor of continuing farm subsidies, but I’d at least like to give a rationale.
Farmland is a resource. Good farmland is usually good for many other things besides farming. Since food production depends on many things a farmer can’t control (weather, disease and insects are three of them), without subsidies farmers will use their land for things that have a better chance of a return.
When that happens, farming will be squeezed into areas that have little other chance for economic development, or that are marginal for any use. We’ll then begin to see a concentration of agriculture even more pronounced than it is now. Huge areas of the United States, Argentina, Brazil and the Ukraine will be over-farmed, while agriculture vitrtually disappears from Japan, China and western Europe.
At some point you have a cartel situation where a few nations control virtually all the world’s food supply. Moreover, the areas that are still being farmed will suffer from overproduction. One good crop blight or drought and millions starve.
One of the problems with subsidising anything is that it acts as another agent of retardation, ie resistance to change. Farmers won’t adapt to new crops or technologies if they are subsidized under the old system. My family used to own a nice chuck of Kansas wheatfield, so I know sorta how the system works. Competition should be allowed into the agricultural Market, just like any other Market. But **kunilou ** makes some very valid points above. It is something we are going to have to struggle with for the next few decades.
The climate change issue is very complicated and it’s not as simple as saying that food grown in Argentina or Australia will produce extra emmisons equal to the shipping costs.
The first point to consider is that subsisies themselves have a carbon emmisons cost, and that cost is almost certainly higher than the emmsions inlvoved in transporting food from elsewhere. That may seem odd, but subsidies involve real money, and that money has to be taken from taxes. Those taxes represent a loss of income for someone or some corporation, and thus they represent a real expenditure of energy and resources. In short, we aren’t playing with Monoply money so we can’t just say that the money doesn’t represent a carbon deficit in itself. The US is pretty efficient in terms of generating wealth via the emmison of carbion, but it still does need to emit carbon for every dollar spent on subsidies. And almost certainly those emmisons will be higher than the shipping costs from offshore.
The next point to consider is that long as oil has a value then the emmisions costs will to some degree already be included in the price of transport. IOW if it uses X tonnes of oil to move the food from source to market then the emmisons have already cost that amount. So if emmisons become too drastic in afreemarket they will price the source out. Ideally it wouldbe possible to put amarket value on emissions themselves, but that is very hard to do.
So it remains highly doubtful if subsidies go any way at all to reducing greenhouse gas emmisons, and they may well increase emissions. If anyone has any references to reasonable economic anlyses that provide an anwer either way I’d love to see them, but until then it’s in no way settled. It certainly isn’t as simple as counting the transport fuel as a carbon deficit while sayingt that subsidy dollars are totally carbon neutral. That’s not economically or geologically valid.
The point about needing someone in rural areas to act as wilderness rangers is certainly perfectly valid. And the idea that they may as well be self-supporting is also valid. However such situations are such a tiny fraction of this issue that they could be ignored without detracting form the outcome.
The first thing to realise is just how few people are required to manage rural areas with modern technology. In Australia, Africa and South America for example rural areas are managed perfectly effectively at densities of 0.2 people/km^2. Even Wyoming and Montana manage population densities of 3 people/km^2. Even if we allow a 10-fold increase the number of people required to manage US wilderness we could still get rid of 2/3 of the people in rural areas, and hence over 2/3 of the subsidies, and have no effect on our management ability.
The other point to realise is that this issue doesn’t require a choice between subsidies or barren farmland. Some farmland may be abandonded, but in the majority of cases it will simply become more efficient or less sprofitable. Remember the majority of subsidies are not for people to produce maize in prime maize cropland. They are for things like people producing mutton in country better suited to cropping, or peanuts in areas better suited to soybeans or rape in areas better suited to forestry. If subsidies were scrapped those areas wouldn’t be abandoned to wilderness. They would simply be given over to economically viable alternatives. Individual farms may be amalgamated but the land would remain productive and wouldn’t need anyone to act as aranger.
So while the issue of needing someone to manage land if it is abandonded is valid enough, when it comes ot subsidies it really isn’t an issue because relatively little of the subsidies go to areas that would need to be abandoned. In general the only areas that would become unprofitable and abandoned under all economoc circumstanes are those areas that are already given to marginal agriculture such as sorghum, dryland wheat or grazing. And those things aren’t heavily subsidised anyway.
Alexander Hamilton was always committed to promoting industry in the U.S. by “bounties,” i.e., subsidies, to industrial enterprises. Pro-industry politicians of later generations preferred to achieve that end through protective tariffs, to shield America’s infant industry from competition from more advanced industrial nations, especially Britain. But I wonder if Hamilton’s approach might have achieved the same ends more rapidly.
Good points BrainGlutton. I think we’re in danger at talking at cross purposes here though, since there are govt subsidies and then there are govt subsidies.
The first type of subsidy is where the govt pays a bounty for truly enterprising endeavours. That may covers things like the transcontinental railway, the internet or the space program. I don’t think that too many people would say that these things shouldn’t be government subsidised. They are projects with a massive benefit to society but the tangible benefits to any one individual are so small that they could not be readily launched without the benefit of taxation pooling funds from those dispersed beneficiaries.
In many cases it’s still arguable whether the govt should continue to subsidise these projects after they are launched and self-sustaining. For example these days the state could easily privatise the postal system, while the internet and space program have largely become privatised, with the subsidsed industry now competing against the private sector.
The other type of subsidy is where most farm subsidies lie. These are not subsidies for enterprise in the sense that they are not risky or innovative in any way. This is of course far less obviously advantageous. There is no real need for subsidies in this area since it is old established technology with an established market. If the industry were not subsidised the market would simply meet the demand for exactly the same product elsewhere.
And that is where farm subsidies differ fundamentally from the development of the internet or the space program. Those things only came into existence because of the subsidies. There was no competition because there was no alternative provider.
So I think it’s important to separate out these two types of subsidy. I think that we all agree that goverment funding of beneficial services where their is no alternative provider is a good thing. I think we also all agree that this is not the case for farm subsidies.
I know essentially nothing about Hamilton beyond his name, so perhaps you could clarify for me. I thought that his general idea was to promote true enterprise in the sense of facilitating and encouraging novel and risky endeavours. Beginnings are fragile times, and any project can die easily in its infancy if it isn’t sheltered. But can that standard really be applied to cotton or mutton production in the US? Those are old established industries, do they really need another 300 years before they are string enough to compete? Are they still infant industries?
And that’s where the retarding effect of subsidies and tarrifs silenus mentioned comes into play. One could certainly make a case for protecting flegling and risky industries until they are estblished and capable of competing on their own. But once the industry has been going for centuries if it still can’t compete then isn’t it clear that it has never learned to compete? And isn;t thta inability to compete produced in part because it has never had to?
Also take into account the gigantic refrigerated halls which, at least at one time, were used by the EU to store away all the surplus production. Years in and years out. Must be extremely energy demanding.
As well as the surplus production which is now merely burned off or dumped. While outright burning or throwing away crops won’t release more CO2 than what the same crops took from the atmosphere while they grew, the work that went into the production of the wasted crops cost CO2 releases. Also I should imagine production of crops where they really are suitable and much work is needed to grew them, cost more CO2 than production where less work is needed.
Anyone interested in the trade/ greenhouse story might like to look at the GTAP page: https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/models/energy/default.asp You can see applications here
Not everyone uses GTAP, but the GTAP-E database is at the heart of the debates.
Not true. At least not as a blanket statement. The fact is there are many areas where corn, soybeans, rice, etc. simply won’t grow, at least not to economically productive levels. If Florida becomes too expensive, citrus growers can’t just move their operations to North Dakota.
Blake , you overlook the “vital national interest” form of subsidy. The government continues to subsidize the postal service because it believes that universal access to the same level of postal service is in the national interest. In my state we have a continuing battle between “the phone company” and state regulators, with the threat of discontinuing service to less-profitable rural customers being used by both sides.
Particularly in Europe, agricultural subsidies are seen as a form of economic insurance against enemies. If food imports are cut off, either by war or economic boycott, countries won’t be able to rebuild the agricultural infrastructure from scratch, particularly once land has been converted to other uses. The subsidies exist to keep the infrastructure in place, despit market inefficiencies.
A few points (relative to United States farm policy only):
This assumes that 100% of those living in rural areas receive farm subsidies. I’ll take a Wild Ass Guess and state that less than 2% of rural residents get a farm payment. It also assumes that rural residents will move to an urban area if they’re not subsidized. Many wouldn’t.
This line of thinking also assumes that farm subsidies go to a person. Farm subsidies go to the land. If a family leaves their rural homeplace, the subsidy doesn’t stop. Their neighbor that stays in the country simply buys or rents their land and the $ amount of subsidy continues. For example, if I’m farming 100 acres of corn and my neighbor is farming 50 acres, subsidy is being paid on 150 acres of corn. If I leave and sell my farm to my neighbor, he’ll then be farming 150 acres of corn and there will still be a subsidy paid on 150 acres.
Au contraire:Farm payments are based on cropping history. Cotton farms get cotton payments, corn farms get corn payments, wheat farms get wheat payments, etc.
The so-called Freedom to Farm policy initiated in the 1990’s allows a farmer to plant whatever crop he thinks will be the most profitable. In general, the land is already being used for the most economical purpose.
This is accurate, since almost all of the less productive land in the U.S. has already been converted to grass or tree production. Farmland is almost never “abandoned”, it’s simply put to some more efficient use.
Sorghum and wheat are as heavily subsidized as are cotton and corn. Grazing land, in general, is not subsidized. There are some circumstances where a farm that used to grow subsidized crops has now converted to grazing land and is still getting a crop payment, thanks to Freedom to Farm, but that’s a rare exception.
Yes, I live on and operate a cattle and timber farm. For my personal situation, I wouldn’t give a flyin’ fuck if they did away with subsidies tomorrow. Around 1990 I received something like $600 under an emergency drought program, and in 1995, after Hurricane Opal did some extensive damage I received about $900 to help with damage repairs. Both these payments were based on 50% cost-shares, so the disasters still caused a loss to me, but the 50% assistance wasn’t bad. Still, $1500 in the past 16 years isn’t a big deal.
Some of my friends who are in the cotton business would suffer if the cotton payments were to be stopped, and I’d hate to see that happen to them.
You obviously misread me. I sais the market would simply meet the demand for citrus elsewhere. Citrus growers are not the market, they are the suppliers. If Florida becomes to expensive it is because California or Brazil is cheaper.
I didn’t actually miss it, it’s just that it’s debatable if it exists. There is no evidence that the same or better level of postal service couldn’t be provided by free enterprise if Fed Ex and Best Western weren’t being forced out of the market by competition with government subsidised post.
Certainly industries like the post, internet, railways etc. are all of vital economic interest and all needed government subsidy to get operational in the first place. But it’s the very subject of this debate whether such subsides are required por even desirable for established industries. That’s why I didn’t include the idea. I’m not sure it exists.
It simply assumes a worst case scenario where the elimination of subsidies will force an abandonment of land. That was the point I was addressing remember. In practical terms it doesn’t matter if 100% of people receive subsidies, or if 2% do and the remaining 98% provide services to them, the net effect is the same: we can still scrap at least 66% of subsidies and keep the land well managed.
Of course if less 2% of people would be affected in any way at all, and most of those wouldn’t abandon the land then we can still scrap at least 66% of subsidies and keep the land well managed.
Either way may point stands: at least 66% of subsidies aren’t required to keep rural area populated ot levels required for basic managment.
Yes, it does. I was specifically addressing the hypothetical introduced by SentientMeat. Under this scenario the only incentive for anyone to “plant trees, keep roads clear and manage drainage” is to be paid to do just that, and nothing else. If the subsidies don’t stop and the neighbours start farming the land then the neighbours clearly have an economic incentive to manage the land. As such it’s totally irrelevant to what was being discussed.
In short you can’t debunk a hypothetical where people have to be paid to plant trees, keep roads clear and manage drainage by bringing in an example where people * don’t * have to be paid to plant trees, keep roads clear and manage drainage.
Well of course they do. Nobody has suggested that maize farms get tobacco payments (much… these days).
But that ignores the point I raised, which was that subsidies are not paid for producing crops in prime cropland. That’s an important word you are missing here.
At the moment farmers in the US are being paid subsides to produce mutton in prime cropping country, and to produce peanuts in prime soybean country. That’s not to say those areas won’t produce those things, or haven’t produced those things for 400 years. It simply means that in the modern world they are best suited to doing something else. That’s a huge difference. These areas could produce other products economically, and prices competitive with the real world and thus reflecting their best use. But they don’t, because they don’t need to. Subsides assure that.
If you pay me $100//ha/day subsidy to grow willow saplings for buggy whip handles then that is the most economic purpose for my land. Similarly if you artificially inflate imported coconut prices sufficiently then growing coconuts will become the most economic use of land in California.
But it’s only economic because of the subsidies. You can’t say that the Freedom to Farm policy reflects economics so long as the economics are totally skewed by subsidies.
If land were being used for its most economic purpose it wouldn’t require subsidies to make it economically competitive. There is plenty of land in the US that makes money in competition with the rest of the world that doesn’t receive one red cent. And if land can’t be economically viable without subsidies then clearly the most economic use is to abandon the land, which we agree is true in almost no cases.
So in short, any land that is being subsidised almost certainly isn’t being used for the most economic purpose by definition. If it were economically viable it wouldn’t need subsidies.
I never suggested they weren’t.
My point was simply what I said: dryland sorghum and wheat tend to be environmentally marginal enterprises. If they are only economically viable due to subsides then when the subsidies stop there are few, if any, options left for the land. It will probably be abandoned. That is not the case for other crops in less environmentall marginal regions. If a maize farm ceases to be economically viable then it can be converted to numerous alternative uses from agroforestry to grazing to rape.
That was the take home message: very little land will be abandoned is abandoning subsidies makes current cropping unviable. Most land has environmentally viable alternative uses beyond the current one. In general the only areas that would become unprofitable and abandoned under all economic circumstances are those areas that are already given to environmentally marginal agriculture such as sorghum, dryland wheat or grazing. And those things aren’t heavily subsidised anyway.
I’m not even sure that disaster relief is included under the umbrella of tariffs/subsidies. I’ve never seen it included before.
Disaster relief is simply a type of state-based insurance for rare, unpredictable and harmful events. Tariffs and subsidies pay out under normal circumstances even if a season is much better than predicted. Those are really totally different creatures.
This is always the difficulty in discussing these things. At some point real people are affected. But I guess we need to keep in mind that real people are also being affected now, it’s just that they are people who can’t economically grow cotton in India or Mexico because the US artificially deflates their prices. That’s just as hard for those people as the alternative is for our friends.
I’m not missing the word, I just don’t agree. The better the land, the higher the historical yield, and the larger the Direct Payment under the current Farm Bill. IOW, the more “prime” the land is the greater the payment is.
Payments under the current (DCP) farm program are calculated thusly: The farm’s historical acreage X the farm’s historical yield per acre X the established rate per unit. (Unit being bushel, ton, CWT or whatever is used for that particular crop) Therefore, it follows that the more prime the land, the higher the payment.
Anyone that has the quality of land that will grow peanuts and a nearby peanut market will be growing peanuts, trust me. Peanuts, where they are adaptable, are a much more profitable crop than soybeans. Likewise, good row-crop land will return more from crops than sheep farming. If there is any subsidy on sheep it has something to do with loans on the wool produced. Corn + corn subsidy will always yield more per acre than sheep plus wool subsidy. I don’t think your above examples are valid.
You do understand, don’t you, that under Freedom to Farm your land may have a history of corn farming. You get a corn payment. If you switch to soybeans or peanuts or what-have you, you will still get a corn payment? Thus the land is already being put to it’s best use, in theory anyway. You seem to think that the farm program dictates what a farmer can grow in order to receive a payment. It no longer does that.
I don’t follow some of what you wrote concerning hypotheticals, subsidies, land and road maintenance, etc. The subsidies could be 100% done away with, and large corporate farms and big timber companies would simply take over. No extra environmental problems, but you better bring some real money when you want a loaf of bread or a piece of plywood.
No, that’s simply not true. The better the land is for producing that crop the greater the payment. Let me see if I can explain that crucial difference.
Once upon a time the US had a thriving industry producing willow poles for buggy whip handles. I kid you not. Now imagine that the government, in 1910, instituted a subsidy for willow poles. The better land was for growing buggy whip handles the greater the payment. Then within 30 years the world changed and there simply was no market to speak of for buggy whips. Yet the subsidy was still being paid, on the basis of how “prime” the land was at producing buggy whips.
The same approximate thing has happened with much US agriculture. The difference is that while there is still a market for cotton, mutton and so forth those things can now be produced far more economically offshore. Yet the subsidies are still being paid to produce those products based on a market that ceased to exist 30 years ago.
This land is not being used effectively. Land that is far better at producing soybeans is being used to produce peanuts. Land that could better produce wheat is being used to produce mutton. Land that could better produce potatoes is being used to produce buggy whips.
This is not prime land for the production that is subsidised. It is at best prime land by US standards, and often not even that. If the land were actually prime land by world standards then there would be no requirement for trade protections and subsidies to prevent the industry collapsing. That’s; what prime means, it means ideally suited. An area that is ideally suited to producing a crop won’t have any difficulty competing.
But this isn’t really prime land. That’s why it needs subsidies in order to be able to produce at all.
But you have once again resorted to tautology. Peanuts are more profitable because people are simply not free to grow peanuts for US sale, and imported peanuts are limited by by volume.
There is a strict quota on who is allowed to grow domestic peanuts peanuts. If you aren’t part of that quota then you can grow all the nuts you like, you just can’t sell them to Americans. And in order to prop up the domestic peanut growers the US turns back any inbound ships that are over the peanut quota limit for the year.
So does it really surprise you that peanuts are more profitable?
Peanuts are more profitable provided they don’t have to compete in any way with areas that really can produce peanuts profitably.
This is exactly what I was referring to above. No doubt coconuts would be far more profitable than citrus in California, if the government made imported coconut more expensive via subsidies and tariffs. That doesn’t mean that California is prime coconut production territory.
Absolute tautology: Protection doesn’t produce inefficient cropping choices because when we have tariffs cropping choices are efficient by the standards of a protected market.
Coconuts + coconut subsidy will always pay more than buggy whips + buggy whip subsidy.
Sorry, but that simply makes no sense. We are discussing how subsidies lead to land being forced into inefficient production. Saying that one subsidy scheme is more efficient than another does nothing whatsoever to address that issue.
No, I don’t think that at all. I think that you are either not understanding or deliberately ducking the point.
First off freedom to farm is just one, short-term rural protection measures. Around 50billion dollars to be sure but just one of a raft of measures, and one that will run less than 10 years. You simply ignore things government loans where the loan repayments can only ever be as much as the crop brings at market. If the crop has to be dumped or fails altogether it costs nothing.
Second, Freedom to Farm does not mean farmers can switch to “what-have-you”. There are in fact massive restrictions on what can be grown. To begin with any individual farm can only plant a maximum 15% of trees or other long-term crops. Secondly lucerne, alfala and several other crops will immediately see the cancellation of subsidies for that land. Lucerne, forage sorghum, hay and pasture can not be increased without forfeiting all subsidies. Added to that the government can demand that land be taken out of production altogether for one or several year or all subsidies will be forfeit.
Fourthly you are blatantly ignoring those areas that simply fall outside “freedom to farm” and operate by closed quota and massive import tariffs or direct import volume restrictions: sugar, peanuts and dairy amongst others.
Thirdly, even if there were anything approaching freedom this is still a method of propping up an inefficient industry. It’s that simple. If the industry was efficient it wouldn’t still need to be propped up over 200 years after it was established. Even if farmers were able to produce what is most profitable competing with other US farmers in a protected market they are not producing at a level that is competitive with the rest of the world. Not event he rest of the first world. That’s why they need to be propped up.
You seem to think that the farm program doesn’t dictate what a farmer can grow in order to receive a payment. You need to read what the legislation actually says.
It’s not that hard.
At worst we could reduce US rural populations by 66% and still have enough people to manage the land effectively.
At worst 100% of the people in any given area are financially dependent on subsidies and tariffs.
Therefore at worst we can remove 66% of farm subsidies. That would result in 33% of people still being financially able to stay in rural areas. And 33% is more than enough to manage the land.
It all seems very straightforward to me.
That’s largely true. I suspect that in some marginal areas there may simply be no money in farming.
Why? Australia can produce wheat cheaper than the US can (hence the need for protection for US wheat). That being the case why wouldn’t a loaf of bread actually cost less?
Similarly Canada can produce pine cheaper than the US can (hence the need for protection for US lumber). That being the case why wouldn’t a piece of plywood actually cost less?
I can’t follow the argument here. You seem to be arguing that removal of protection that inflates prices against market forces will somehow result in higher prices.
There would be no need if other countries didn’t have their own protective systems. Prime U.S. farmland is as productive as can be found anywhere in the world.
The peanut quota has been eliminated in the United States.
Where did you get this idea? It’s totally false. If a corn farmer decides to plant his entire acreage to pine trees he will still get his corn payments, at least through the end of the current farm bill.
This is simply not true. If a cotton farmer decides to plant his whole place to alfalfa, he’ll still get his cotton payments. Go to the USDA’s FSA (Farm Service Agency) office nearest you and get them to explain the current program to you.
This is not true either. I don’t know where you got all this information, but it’s either ancient (went out 20+ years ago, maybe), or you’ve been misinformed.
I have read it, and studied it very carefully. I suggest you seek current information from a reliable source. Maybe print out this thread, with some areas highlighted, and take it to an FSA office. They are the people who administer these programs, and they should be willing to bring you up to date.