Citing failures of the crop insurance program to attract adequate participation at sufficiently high coverage levels, Congress has passed two crop insurance reform bills since 1980, in 1994 and 2000, that have increased the scope of the program and the size of government costs. The Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 provides $ billion in subsidies over five years to encourage the purchase of federal crop insurance. Projected annual costs of the program under this legislation are estimated at $3 billion, almost double the annual costs under the previous program and a ten-fold increase over spending levels of the early 1980s. As the costs of the program have grown, criticisms have arisen that the high.
