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FARM & RANCH
May 2014
www.havredailynews.com
Farm program changes
The bill eliminates, consolidates or replaces many programs in previous farm bills, and also cuts the 10-year budget for SNAP by $8.6 billion. Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will, over the next 10 years, would spend $956 billion with $756 billion of that in nutrition programs, which would reduce the nation’s deficits by $16.6 billion from 2014 to 2023. The bill eliminates two long-standing programs, the direct payment program and the countercyclical programs and sets a limit of $900,000 adjusted gross income for eligibility Ryan McCormick, past president of the Montana Grain Growers Association, said in a meeting about the farm bill in March that the association didn’t support eliminating the direct payment program, which provides guaranteed payments to producers but had to accept the cut as part of negotiations. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a Big Sandy-area farmer, said in a press conference in March that the bill helped cut costs while protecting Montana farmers and ranchers. “The best thing is, it beefs up crop insurance in a big, big way,” he said. “I don’t
want any government subsidies when times are good.” But, Tester said, when times are bad, such as in times of drought, some insurance is “very, very important.” The bill is a little different way of doing business, Tester said, including the elimination of direct payments, which has made some people unhappy That is part of dealing with the federal deficit and the national debt, he said. “We have to make the government lean and mean,” he said.
Insurance options, CRP, change, continue
Replacing programs, styles of administration
The bill also continues crop insurance, with some changes. That includes expanding the Noninsured Crop Asistance Program, which provides coverage for weather-related losses when crop insurance is not available, and a new
The direct and countercyclical programs have been replaced by new options, with another set of options within one of those, but the choice will last the five-year life of the bill. Producers can elect to enroll their farm number — producers can have different numbers designating tracts on their farm — and must enroll each section in the same program but can have different selections on the different tracts. In the price loss coverage election, payments are made to farmers when the effective price of a covered commodity drops
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May 2014
below the set price. The payment is equal to 85 percent of the base acres of the covered crop and the price difference between effective price and the reference price. In the Agricultural Risk Coverage, the payment is made when the actual revenue is less than the guaranteed revenue, but the producer has to decide whether to use a county-based figure or individual figures. For each farm, the producer has to decide whether to use the individual arc, which will enroll all commodities on the farm, or PLC and County ARC. If PLC and County ARC are used, the producer has to enroll base acres on the farm either in PLC or Country ARC. The elections will stay in place for the 2014-2018 crop years, an FSA fact sheet says.
Continued from page 5
Changes to programs, cuts in the budget
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FARM & RANCH program, the Supplemental Coverage Option, which provides additional area-based insurance coverage in combination with traditional crop insurance policies. Another big change is in CRP, although previous changes may make it somewhat moot. The cap on the national amount of land enrolled in CRP will gradually be cut from its current limit of 32 million acres to 24 million in the 2017 and 2018 crop years. A good chunk of land in north-central Montana already has been coming out of CRP, as a combination of high commodity prices and increased requirements with decreased payments persuading farmers to put the land back in active production. The 2014 Farm Bill also allows producers a chance to use an “early out” provision to leave CRP contracts but only in 2015. It also continues the Transition Incentive Program allowing transitioning land enrolled in CRP to a beginning or socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher, adding military veterans to the class of people to whom the land can transition. To read more, go online to the Farm Bill home page at http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/ fbapp?area=home&subject=landing&topic=l anding.
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