Earlier this year, farm owners and operators elected price protection (price loss coverage, or PLC) or revenue protection (agricultural risk coverage, or ARC), for their farm program safety net.
“Previously, owners and operators completed yield, base and election decisions,” North Dakota State University Extension Service farm management specialist Dwight Aakre says. “Now they must complete the ‘enrollment’ or ‘contracting’ step of the program.”
Operators and owners of farms in 2014 and 2015 have until Sept. 30, 2015, to complete the enrollment for those programs.
The program elections producers made on the farm are an irrevocable program election that runs through the 2018 crop year. The contract enrollment process is an annual requirement for each of the years 2014 to 2018. The annual enrollment phase must be completed by Sept. 30, 2015, for the 2014 and 2015 contract years.
ARC and PLC payments are earned on farms that are enrolled in the annual contract if:
- The crop base has been elected in the PLC program and the marketing year average price falls below the reference price for the crop
- The crop base has been elected in the ARC-county (ARC-CO) program and the actual revenue for the year falls below the guarantee for the applicable crop base
- The crop base has been elected in the ARC individual farm level coverage (ARC-IC) program and the farm’s actual revenue falls below the farm’s guarantee for the year
The 2014 crop year payments, if triggered, will begin to be issued in October 2015. The crops that trigger 2014 payments will be announced by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) later this fall.
For ARC-CO and PLC, the contract enrollment must be completed by producers with an interest in historical base acres of the farm. For ARC-IC farms, the contract must be completed by producers who have an interest in the planted acres of the covered commodities on the farm.
Aakre encourages producers to contact their local FSA office to schedule an appointment to complete the ARC/PLC enrollment process and sign the program contract for each of their FSA farms by the Sept. 30, 2015, deadline.
Source:ndsu.edu