Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
QCS Managing Editor
Quay County farmers who grew little or no crops from 2008 to 2012 due to drought may not be able to use new subsidy options under the federal Farm Bill passed this year, according to Brandon Terrazas, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program specialist with the Farm Services Agency.
Terrazas explained the options available and some of the mechanics involved with making choices to about 80 farm representatives from Quay and Harding counties Thursday at an information session sponsored by the FSA.
The subsidy choices are part of the Farm Safety Net portion of the Farm Bill, according to a summary issued by FSA.
Farmers will need data on crop yields from four or five years, Terrazas said, in order to choose from the options available for computing subsidies under the new bill. Those who do not have such data “will have to stay on the program they’re on now,” he said.
Farmers who till the 42,000 acres that depend on the Arch Hurley Conservancy District for irrigation grew crops this year for the first time in three years. For the previous three years, there had been no water allocations due to low water volume in Conchas Lake, the district’s water source. These farmers are not likely to have adequate crop yield data to have a choice, Terrazas said.
Farmers who can collect crop yield data, he said, will be able to choose between two Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) systems or a Price Loss Coverage (PLC) scheme to receive subsidies if they lose money on crops.
ARC programs base subsidies on revenues, and PLC programs base them on prices of individual crops, Terrazas said. One ARC option bases subsidies on revenues countywide; the other bases subsidies on individual farm revenues.
Terrazas walked the farmers through different ways to compute what the probable subsidies would be under the three coverage options He used different crop mix examples to determine for each system how to figure out proportions of total cropland devoted to each crop and compute yield and revenue estimates.
Overall, he said in an interview, the Farm Bill is likely to reduce farm subsidies, since it was designed to decrease the federal funding for agricultural programs. Instead of direct payments to farmers whether or not they experienced losses, he said, the new farm bill eliminates the direct payments while continuing crop insurance programs.
Quay County FSA representative Judy Smith said Thursday’s session will be the first of several that will be scheduled to help explain the complexities of the Farm Bill’s subsidy programs.
Farmers have until Feb. 27 to report updated crop bases and yields, and until March 31 to decide which subsidy system they will adopt, Terrazas said.
Failure to choose, Terrazas said, will mean farmers will not be able to change their subsidy systems until 2018, when a new farm bill will be considered.