By DAVID GRONER -- Some 2020 Agricultural Risk Coverage/Price Loss Coverage (ARC/PLC) payments have been issued.
The 2018 Farm Bill allowed producers to select the type of risk management and safety net program they wanted for each base crop acreage on every farm. The selections were crop acreage base by crop acreage base and farm by farm specific. The selections were also fixed for two years 2019-2020.
The farm bill provided for payments to be made each year of the bill after the end of the marketing year for each crop. Payment rates would be determined after the Marketing Year Average (MYA) price was known and then compared against a predetermined reference price for each crop. If the MYA was higher than the reference price for a crop, then no payments would be disbursed for that year. The 2020 marketing year has ended for all 2020 crops in Tallahatchie County.
For farms on which the PLC option was taken, the payment triggered for wheat and seed cotton only. Payment rates for these crops were: wheat, 50 cents per bushel; and seed cotton, 1.80 cents per pound.
Each farm has an established PLC yield for each base crop on the farm. In 2020, participants could increase the farm yield by providing actual yields produced during the five years of 2013-2017. If the average of these five years was better than the established yield on a farm, a producer could get an increase. This is the first time that has been allowed since 2014. Also, 2020 is the only year that this increase will be allowed during the 2018 Farm Bill period that expires in 2023.
The 2020 rice payment rate will not be determined until the end of October, but through the 11 months, the payment rate has averaged about 1.6 cents per pound.
The ARC program is a combination of price and yield on a countywide basis. The only crop in Tallahatchie County that triggered for ARC was 2020 wheat, with a payment rate of $26.00 per acre. No other crops in the ARC county option triggered a payment.
The payments were released by Treasury on Wednesday, Oct. 6, and for producers with direct deposit they should start showing up in three to five days, so most by the week of Oct 11-15. The payment statements will be one week to 10 days after release of payments.
Producers with assignments on file will have any 2020 payment mailed to their lender. All producers should receive a payment statement in the mail advising that either the payments are assigned to a lender or transmitted by direct deposit.
The next round of October payments will be the Conservations Reserve Program (CRP) annual rental on contracts since 2009. That round of payments will be released around Oct. 15. The rice PLC payment will not be released until the first week of November.
For more information, contact the Tallahatchie County FSA office at 662-647-8857, ext. 2.
