Columns

Friday, February 28, 2003

don’t forget april 1 farm program deadline

Iowans have already begun to see the benefits of the new farm bill – passed with solid bipartisan votes in Congress and signed with strong support by President Bush. A key feature of the bill for Iowa is its increased farm income protection, but much of this support is yet to be claimed, since only about 55 percent of Iowa farmers have signed up for the new farm program.

With the upcoming April 1 deadline, I’m concerned that Iowa farmers and landowners may miss this one-time opportunity to select the base and yield option that offers the best income protection for their individual farms. That leaves less than a month to complete almost half of Iowa’s base and yield updates.

The farm bill was designed to allow farmers to choose from several options for updating commodity program bases and yields. While these choices do involve some added effort, the payoff is stronger farm income protection which is better suited to the specific circumstances of individual farms.

Initially, USDA imposed a number of unnecessary complications and obstacles on what we had written in the farm bill. USDA’s rules required farmers to furnish crop production records that are hard to come by, unavailable or that may never have existed – such as for crops used for feed. Often those required records were not truly essential for updating yields.

Iowa farmers let me know of their concerns, and I called on USDA to correct its rules to make it easier to establish or update payment yields according to the chosen base and yield option. Secretary Veneman responded with important changes, including:

• USDA agreed to allow use of commodity loan and loan deficiency payment (LDP) records to establish yields – first just for crops used for feed and now for other production as well.

• Where land has changed hands and production records are unavailable, Farm Service Agency (FSA) county committees may determine an appropriate updated yield for the farm – instead of USDA’s original plan to use 75 percent of the county average yield.

• If LDP information is unavailable, but FSA or crop insurance records indicate the crop was used for feed, FSA county committees may assign a yield based on similar farms.

But keep in mind, producers who miss the April 1 deadline gain nothing from these changes. They will forfeit their ability to choose a base and yield option and have to take the “default” in which soybean payment yields are based on 75 percent of the county average.

So it’s critical that farmers and landowners act quickly, if they haven’t done so, to gather their information, call for appointments and visit their local FSA offices.

Data you should pull together for each farm includes: the previously existing base acreage along with (for each of the 1998 through 2001 crop years) the FSA acreage report and production evidence for all covered commodities. Using this information, you can evaluate the options, decide whether to update all bases and yields or just add soybean acres to existing base, and then sign up.

For help in understanding your farm program options, log onto the base and yield analyzer at http://www.afpc.tamu.edu/models/bya/, or contact your FSA office or one of my offices.

Iowa is expected to receive more than any other state under this farm bill, but we cannot afford to leave money on the table by delaying program signup and missing the April 1 deadline.