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CRS-2 The federal crop insurance program was instituted in the 1930s and was subject to major legislative reforms in 1980, and ag ain in 1994 and 2000. The Agriculture Risk Protection Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-224) pumped $8.2 billion in new federal spending over a five-year period into the program primarily through more generous premium subsidies to help make the program more affordable to farmers and enhance farmer participation levels, in an effort to preclude the need for ad-hoc emergency disaster payments. Since 2000, the federal subsidy to the crop insurance program has averaged about $3.3 billion per year, up from an annual average of $1.1 billion in the 1990s and about $500 million in the 1980s.