The General Accounting Office (GAO) released its review of the 22 agricultural commodity checkoff programs today, finding no major problems but calling for more consistent auditing procedures and oversight by the United States Department of Agriculture. It also recommends economic analysis done to determine the checkoff programs’ benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) be done consistently across all commodities. These BCRs range widely, from 17.4 for pork programs to 2.14 for fluid milk. But it’s difficult to compare program effectiveness among commodity programs since the methodologies to determine them often differ, depending on the contracted group doing the analysis.
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