Odds and ends …
» March 11 is the final date to make an offer under the General CRP sign-up for 2022. USDA may extend the deadline, but there has been no word to date.
We have contacted everyone with expiring General CRP. This does not affect producers with CRP contracts that were enrolled under a Continuous CRP sign-up. That reoffer period does not begin until April 1. All CRP participants with 2022 expiring CRP contracts should have received a letter from USDA’s national office last week.
Once again, we are only facing a deadline with the General CRP sign-up, which uses competitive rental rate bids offered by landowners to select CRP acres and participants. Continuous CRP which is limited to more environmentally sensitive land, is not on a competitive bid basis.
» March 15 is the final date to enroll in the 2022 ARC/PLC program for producers with crop acreage bases on their farms. All farms that are not under multi-year enrollment must be enrolled every year under ARC/PLC. Any producer that wants to change the program election from ARC to PLC must make that change by March 15.
Also, new for this year, any producer planning to plant cotton in 2022 that chooses the crop insurance supplement coverage program referred to as STAX must withdraw their farms from the ARC/PLC seed cotton base participation before March 15 to be eligible for STAX coverage. The crop insurance deadline to choose STAX coverage was Feb 28, so cotton producers have two weeks to notify FSA and remove themselves from the seed cotton ARC/PLC. This does not affect any other bases on the farm; they may stay enrolled for 2022. But failing to notify FSA may result in STAX coverage being cancelled by RMA
» Congress can legislate and authorize a federal disaster program to be administered by FSA at any time. The FY 2022 Continuing Resolution passed in September to keep the government running had legislation to provide a 2020 and 2021 WHIP type disaster program to cover primary disaster counties designated in either of those years. The details of this new version of WHIP have yet to be worked out and to date there is no known timeframe.
We continue to get questions, but the latest news was from the secretary of agriculture testifying before Congress before the Christmas recess. Secretary Vilsack said it would likely be an April/May timeframe before the WHIP program would be ready to start sign-up.
» March 15 is also the deadline, as I talked about in the article last week, to report any cover crop acreage planted this winter at the local FSA office and receive a $5 per acre discount on a producer’s 2022 crop insurance premium with the Risk Management Agency. So please, if you have a winter cover crop planted, report the acres to us by March 15. It only takes a few minutes.
