Farmers can start Farm Bill changes today

Today is the start of agriculture producers being able to decide how to list their yield history and acre allocation in new programs unveiled in the 2014 Farm Bill, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture also unveiled some online resources to help determine how to select the best options and best programs for individual farms.

In the farm bill, two new programs, Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, provide a commodity farm safety net programs. Direct and Countercyclical Payments and other programs were eliminated in the bill, with farmers selecting between ARC or PLC, or a combination of them in some instances, to provide protection when yield or market forces cause substantial drops in crop prices or revenues. Producers will have through early spring of 2015 to select which program works best for their businesses.

"We're committed to giving farmers as much information as we can so they can make an informed decision between these programs," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a press release. "These resources will help farm owners and producers boil the information down, understand what their options are, and ultimately make the best decision on which choice is right for them. We are very grateful to our partners for their phenomenal work in developing these new tools within a very short time frame."

To help farmers choose between ARC and PLC, USDA helped create online tools that allow farmers to enter information about their operation and see projections about what each program will mean for them under possible future scenarios, the release says. The new tools are now available at http://www.fsa.usda.gov/arc-plc.

Under the bill, passed and signed into law early this year after two years of partisan delays, farmers can keep the base acre allocation and yield history they have used or update it. Today marks the start of farmers being able to reallocate base acres and update yields, the first step before choosing which new program best serves their risk management needs. Letters sent this summer enabled farm owners and producers to analyze their crop planting history in order to decide whether to keep their base acres or reallocate them according to recent plantings, the press release said.

"The 2014 Farm Bill represented some of the largest farm policy reforms in decades. One of the Farm Bill's most significant reforms is finally taking effect," Vilsack said in the release. "Farming is one of the riskiest businesses in the world. These new programs help ensure that risk can be effectively managed so that families don't lose farms that have been passed down through generations because of events beyond their control. But unlike the old direct payment program, which paid farmers in good years and bad, these new initiatives are based on market forces and include county — and individual — coverage options. These reforms provide a much more rational approach to helping farmers manage risk."