Distributional issues in check‐off funded programs

Abstract

Agricultural commodity taxes, called check-offs, are used to finance promotion, research, and other activities that can be regarded as industry collective goods. The collection of the check-offs and the programs they are used to fund have implications for the welfare of consumers, other producers, and taxpayers in addition to their effects on those producers who are allowed to vote in the procedures for authorizing the programs. As well as simple fairness or equity considerations, such shifting of the incidence of benefits and costs to others can lead to a divergence between producer and national optimal choices, and hence efficiency losses. From a public policy perspective, then, the implications for others ought to be considered in the design of the enabling legislation, in the evaluation of the specific programs, and in the rules governing the behavior of the agricultural producer groups engaged in commodity check-off programs. [EconLit citations: Q180, Q130, H420]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 277-287, 2003.

Consumers' perceptions of stakeholder credibility: who has it and who perceives it

“…Other studies focused on the impact of generic promotion programs (Alston et al, 2001;Brester and Schroeder, 1995;Kinnucan et al, 1997;Ward and Lambert, 1993) funded and implemented by public agencies or by food producers' associations. Common examples of generic promotion or advertising of food products (such as apples), sometimes related to a geographical location (such as Michigan apples), include check-off and dynamic programs (Alston et al, 2001(Alston et al, , 2003Kaiser, 2005). Furthermore, the literature focused on the impact of information from private actors through standards and endorsements.…”

Food system innovations for healthier diets in low and middle-income countries

“…A large literature studying generic commodity advertising programs in developed countries shows that it is possible to affect demand for specific food products through information provision (e.g. Alston, Freebairn and James, 2003). However, such campaigns may or may not target increased consumption of healthier foods.…”

A Benefit‐Cost Analysis of U.S. Agricultural Trade Promotion

“…Most benefit‐cost studies ignore consumer impacts, in part because the enabling legislation that underlies the collective promotion effort emphasizes producer benefits. However, as the analysis of Alston, Freebairn, and James (2003) suggests, this view is too narrow in that consumers implicitly share in the cost of the promotion effort through incidence shifting of the marketing fee. Moreover, in the case of export promotion where general tax revenues are used to augment industry monies, there is a clear national interest in whether benefits, broadly defined, exceed costs.…”