FSA is in the process of releasing all 2022 Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) annual rental payments and by the time this article is published, most will be on their way to participants.
Many contracts are expiring, and this will be the last payments under those contracts. Some have re-offers and will continue in CRP, while others will not, releasing the land for timber harvest or pasture and/or hay in the case of grass cover.
We get a lot of calls each year about when grass CRP can be mowed or clipped, well that time is now: any time after Aug. 15 and through April 1, 2023.
All 2021 ARC/PLC payments except for rice have been disbursed. This year, with commodity prices up most of the 2021 marketing year, most base acreage commodities did not qualify to receive a payment through either of the elections of programs, Average Revenue by county (ARC) or Price Loss Coverage (PLC).
That is not a bad thing, as these programs are “safety net” type programs. When the market offers a farmer a good price and, in the case of ARC, the crop has a good countywide yield, then the programs do not have to kick in and provide the difference. The only two programs to activate for a payment this year in Tallahatchie County were Grain Sorghum ARC and Peanuts PLC.
Most of our crop bases in Tallahatchie County are soybeans, corn and seed cotton, with some lesser amounts in wheat or grain sorghum. These crop payments affected seven farms and with most of those, the bases were so small that the payments were insignificant.
Peanut PLC paid because the peanut strike or reference price is high compared to other crops and the Grain Sorghum ARC paid because last year’s grain sorghum crop was primarily second crop or grain sorghum planted late behind flooded and destroyed corn or other crops. This resulted in the 2022 countywide grain sorghum becoming the lowest ever recorded. So even though the price of grain sorghum was up like other commodities during the 2022 marketing year, the county yield was so low — well below the county benchmark average yield — that the revenue protection kicked in with when actual 2022 yield multiplied by 2022 average market price.
This is a rare situation, and it only affected a few farms that had ARC election chosen for their grain sorghum base acres for 2021. That’s just like farms with a peanut base are rare in Tallahatchie County.
2021 rice payments, if any are due, will not be determined until November.
