Updating acreage bases and crop yields has been problematic for farmers who are currently operating lands they didn’t own or operate between 1998 and 2001.
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
Find out how to advertise here - Email us! [email protected]
Updating acreage bases and crop yields has been problematic for farmers who are currently operating lands they didn’t own or operate between 1998 and 2001. To update crop yields under the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program farmers must know and be able to prove how much their lands produced during those four years.
Until the introduction of a new provision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week, farmers were required to accept 75% of the county’s average yield if production records were not available or were nonexistent.
Now, Kirby Payne, executive director for the Daviess County Farm Service Agency, says farmers who didn’t own eligible land in prior years or didn’t farm it and cannot obtain historical production evidence from previous owners or operators can turn to their FSA county committee for help.
“Under a provision announced by the secretary of agriculture last week, the county committee can establish yields for farms without the necessary production evidence,” Payne said. The yield will be based on actual production of similar farms in the local farming community or the loan deficiency payment records for the specific farm. The assigned yield from the similar farms cannot exceed the county average yield.
The new provision should help producers who have had trouble obtaining some of their records due to circumstances beyond their control.
The new provision is effective immediately and will be applicable to counter-cyclical yields for those producers electing to update their bases and yields for eligible commodities, and for direct payment yields for oilseeds.
Prior to this, producers applying for these programs would have had to accept 75% of the county average yield as the yield for their farms. Those farmers who have already accepted the 75% county average as their yield may also take advantage of this new procedure.
To update bases and yields, owners must make the base and yield selection by April 1, 2003. Producers must also sign the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program contract by June 2, 2003.
Producers who do not want to accept the program’s default base and yield option must complete the base and yield selection before April 1, 2003.