Assessment of Marketing Loan Program Options

摘要

The Secretary of Agriculture did not implement marketing loans for 1987 crops of wheat, feed grains, and soybeans. Marketing loans were not implemented for wheat and feed grains because other less costly policy tools are lowering domestic prices as much as marketing loans could. For soybeans, if world prices were significantly below U.S. prices, a marketing loan could lower domestic prices, but at a substantial cost. Implementation of marketing loans for rice and upland cotton has allowed the United States to regain the share of world trade for these commodities during the 1986/87 marketing year that it enjoyed in the early 1980's.