The Farm Service Agency has announced that payments will soon be making their way to producers and landowners enrolled in several of their programs, including annual rental payments from the Conservation Reserve Program which are on the way to those with rolled acreage.
According to Deputy Administrator John Berge, “We announced that we are issuing $1.77 billion to contract participants. That’s 667,000 participants that are receiving payments for those conservation efforts on just over 23 million acres of private land.”
Payments are also being issued through what some consider to be the most significant components of the Farm Safety Net Farm Bill programs, agriculture risk and price loss coverage.
“Payments being made this year, given some of the market volatility that we’re seeing, those payments have triggered $447 million through the ARC and PLC programs, the majority of that is coming out through ARC County,” he adds.
Unfortunately, farmers in the Midwest will largely miss out on those payments. That is according to Gary Schnitkey an Extension Agricultural Economist at the University of Illinois.
“FSA has released the data needed to make payments. There will be no PLC payments for corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts, or cotton, for that matter. So, there are no PLC payments. ARC payments, I believe there’s one county in Illinois that would get an ARC payment. So, most farmers will not get any commodity title payments,” he explains.
While ARC and PLC payments are tied to last year’s production, Federal Crop Insurance payments are tied to this year’s. Schnitkey says that those payments are unlikely as well.
“The traditional RP (Revenue Protection) policies, if farmers are getting anything above trend yields, probably won’t be paying. There are some reports in the western part of the state that yields are at APH (Actual Production History), and they may get a payment if they are at the 85% coverage level,” he adds.
Mist counties in Illinois are expected to harvest record or near-record yields this year, meaning revenue-protection crop insurance, if any, will be small.
