About

Bart Fischer, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor and co-director of the Agricultural and Food Policy Center in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. His applied research focuses on solving real-world policy problems for agricultural producers and on anticipating potential policy changes for Congress to consider. Fischer also serves as a senior advisor for federal relations in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Texas A&M AgriLife. He has extensive experience working on agricultural policy, having served for more than eight years on the House Agriculture Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including roles such as deputy staff director and chief economist under the leadership of Ranking Member K. Michael Conaway. Fischer was involved in major agricultural policy developments, including the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills. He is the fifth generation in his family to be involved in wheat, cotton, and cattle operations in Southwest Oklahoma and remains actively involved in these activities.

Research topics

• Economics
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Natural resource economics
• Computer Science
• Business
• Agronomy
• Biochemical engineering
• Engineering
• Biotechnology
• Pulp and paper industry
• Biology
• Geography
• Environmental resource management
• Environmental economics
• Water resource management

Selected publications

• Effectiveness evaluation of national nutrition education programmes must be a priority to safeguard nutrition security

  Nature Food · 2025-04-23 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Broad‐Based Categorical Eligibility Policy and SNAP Participation

  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2025-11-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT The broad‐based categorical eligibility (BBCE) policy allows states to bypass federal gross income and asset tests for supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) eligibility. Policymakers often propose limiting BBCE's scope or eliminating it altogether. Yet, our understanding of BBCE's impact on SNAP participation has relied solely on static two‐way fixed effects (TWFE) estimators, which have been criticized for assuming no treatment effect heterogeneity across states and over time. In this study, using a heterogeneity‐robust difference‐in‐differences estimator, we provide new estimates of BBCE's impact that are more than twice as large as those derived from the static TWFE models. Importantly, our event‐study analysis shows that BBCE's effect has increased uniformly over time across state groups defined by their adoption timing, explaining the smaller effects estimated by the static TWFE model. In addition, we find that although BBCE extended eligibility to higher‐income households, most of its impact on participation occurred among households already eligible under federal gross income limits. Our counterfactual simulations further show that between 2000 and 2016, extending eligibility to higher‐income households accounted for approximately 11.5% of the increase in participation and 3.8% of the rise in program spending resulting from BBCE, with the remainder driven by already income‐eligible households.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Forecasting the Path of SNAP Spending Using State-Level Panel Data Models

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Dual use insurance for annual forage producers: comparing risk management alternatives

  Agricultural Finance Review · 2023-04-13 · 1 citations

  article

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Dual Use (DU) Option – a crop insurance policy created by the 2018 Farm Bill – relative to other policies available to dual-purpose annual forage producers. The new policy combines existing rainfall-based policies for annual forage crops and multi-peril policies for grain, allowing coverage for multiple crop uses on the same acres during the same growing season. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a simulation model to examine crop insurance choices for a typical Texas dual-purpose wheat farm. The certainty equivalent (CE) of wealth is used to rank choices within and between three insurance plans and to analyze the effects of those choices over a range of producer risk aversion levels and for three cases of yield expectations. Findings The DU Option is more preferred as risk aversion increases, but it is not universally preferred. Therefore, while the policy can be a viable risk management tool, certain restrictions may be limiting its effectiveness. Practical implications The findings of this paper can help explain farm-level decision making related to dual-purpose annual forage crop insurance program choices. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by documenting a new crop insurance program made available in the 2018 Farm Bill and provides insights into producers' possible choices by evaluating extensive scenarios.

  PublisherDOI

• <scp>SNAP</scp>enrollment cycles: New insights from heterogeneous panel models with<scp>cross‐sectional</scp>dependence

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2023-02-14 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has grown rapidly over the past 2 decades. A large literature relies on state‐level panel data on SNAP enrollment and implements traditional two‐way fixed effects estimators to identify the impact of economic conditions on SNAP enrollment. This empirical strategy implicitly assumes slope parameter homogeneity and ignores the possibility of cross‐sectional dependence in the regression error terms. The latter could feasibly arise in state‐level panel data if the time‐varying unobserved common shocks, such as national financial crises, have differential effects on SNAP participation across states in the United States. This study empirically evaluates the appropriateness of these two assumptions by adopting a more general common factor model, allowing for slope parameter heterogeneity and error term cross‐sectional dependence both separately and jointly. We find that although assuming a common slope parameter across states does not seem problematic for identification, allowing for the error term cross‐sectional dependence leads to a roughly 40% reduction in the estimated long‐run impact of the unemployment rate on SNAP enrollment. This finding has important implications for policymaking decisions—even small biases could lead to suboptimal policy responses considering the program's size. Our counterfactual simulations support our main results, implying the importance of carefully accounting for time‐varying unobserved heterogeneity when studying the cyclicality of SNAP enrollment using state‐level panel data.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Crop Insurance Implications of Permanently Authorizing the Emergency Relief Program

  Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics · 2023-02-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The United States has a long history of providing ad hoc disaster assistance to agricultural producers. The latest version – the Emergency Relief Program (ERP) – follows five consecutive years of appropriations for disaster assistance. In response to ongoing appropriations, there is growing interest in establishing a permanent disaster program. However, with that comes concerns over the impact it could have on the existing farm safety net, particularly crop insurance. In this paper, we characterize the likely effects on crop insurance coverage levels of a permanent authorization of ERP. We assume that corn and soybean producers choose a coverage level based on the effects of that choice on the distribution of future ending wealth reflecting crop revenue, insurance indemnities, and ERP payments. We find very modest effects on crop insurance coverage level choices and crop insurance premiums collected.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Carbon sequestration and water management in Texas—One size does not fit all

  Agrosystems Geosciences & Environment · 2023 · 12 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Natural resource economics
  • Business

  Abstract Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to sustainably meeting food, fiber, and feed production needs. The technical and socioeconomic feasibility of different CSA strategies depends on local conditions, and there is no one‐size‐fits‐all approach. Here, we review two key aspects of CSA with a focus on Texas: soil C sequestration and water management. Carbon sequestration potential is highly variable across Texas as it depends on local biophysical conditions and soil management practices in place, for example, tillage and cover crops. Grasslands also have an important role to play in C sequestration. Important co‐benefits of effective soil management for C sequestration, such as reduced CO 2 emissions, enhanced soil structure, and increased microbial activity, can positively impact soil fertility and productivity. The economic and political realities of C sequestration will have a strong influence on the implementation of technically feasible strategies. The major challenge for water management is the sustainable allocation of increasingly scarce resources. Expanded irrigation is a short‐term solution, but in many cases, the existing water supply is insufficient to meet future demand. A drying Texas, and aquifer depletion, portends lower future supplies. The Panhandle, Llano Estacado, and Rio Grande regions have the greatest projected gaps between future supply and demand. Increasing water‐use efficiency and using drought‐tolerant crops are important management goals and precision agriculture with site‐specific management measures could help improve drought resiliency. Texas’ geographic diversity is reflected in the variety of agricultural commodities produced by the state, and CSA activities are likely to be equally diverse.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Policy challenges to enhance soil carbon sinks: the dirty part of making contributions to the Paris agreement by the United States

  Carbon Management · 2023 · 23 citations

  • Natural resource economics
  • Environmental science
  • Business

  The U.S. government is planning significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as part of their nationally determined contribution to the Paris Agreement.The plan includes a variety of activities, one of which is enhancing carbon sinks in soils through a climate-smart agriculture program.The nature of soil carbon along with market forces, cultural factors and other issues create challenges for a program in climate-smart agriculture.These challenges include quantification of soil carbon sequestration, targeting practice adoption that is additional to past adoption, and ensuring that emissions of other greenhouse gases do not increase with climate-smart practices.In addition, there are challenges associated with maintaining carbon storage in soils over a long-time horizon; and avoiding increases in greenhouse gas emissions on non-participating lands.We review and discuss options for addressing challenges with direct regulations, subsidies and tax incentives, carbon taxes, and carbon credit offsets.None of these policy interventions are likely to overcome all challenges, but there are ways to limit risks that challenges pose to each intervention.The ability of the U.S. government to limit or mitigate these risks through careful design of a climatesmart agriculture program will largely determine how much carbon is sequestered in soils, and associated contributions to their emissions reduction goal for the Paris Agreement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Machine learning-informed and synthetic biology-enabled semi-continuous algal cultivation to unleash renewable fuel productivity

  Nature Communications · 2022 · 120 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Environmental science
  • Pulp and paper industry

  /day, bringing the minimum biomass selling price down to approximately $281 per ton.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Simplifying the farm safety net

  Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy · 2022-04-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract While the 2018 Farm Bill allowed producers to choose between Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) annually, those decisions can be quite difficult to make. The purpose of this paper is to explore options for simplifying (or eliminating) the decision between ARC and PLC. Specifically, we examine the cost of (1) giving producers the maximum of ARC and PLC and (2) simply giving producers both ARC and PLC. The results indicate the 10‐year cost of implementing either option costs far less than the recent short‐term, ad hoc assistance provided to producers over the past few years.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Henry L. Bryant

  Agricultural & Applied Economics Association

  11 shared

• Joe L. Outlaw

  Texas A&M University

  8 shared

• J. Marc Raulston

  Texas A&M University

  5 shared

• Pourya Valizadeh

  Texas A&M University

  4 shared

• George M. Knapek

  4 shared

• Brian K. Herbst

  3 shared

• Marc S. Allison

  2 shared

• James W. Richardson

  2 shared