Some important deadlines are coming up for agricultural producers.
Jim Nesseth with Extended Ag Services in Lakefield, Minnesota says the USDA’s spring price for crop insurance has been set. “As of March 1, we were able to come out with our spring prices for crop insurance and the good news for that for everyone is it’s up considerably last year for corn, we’re up $4.58, that’s what we use to determine values and coverage on our crop insurance and revenue plan. That’s up $.70 from a year ago. Then in soybeans, that went up considerably. That’s at $11. 57 and so that’s a $2.30 jump from last year. So, we really got some great coverage this year on crop insurance depending on what level you want to go. I know a lot of guys are looking at the 85 percent level because we’re obviously concerned about price decline and this dry weather, so a lot of decisions to be made and we’ve got until March 15 to complete that. A lot of agencies and agents are working on talking to farmers and getting those levels and crop insurance signed up.”
He adds that the Farm Program deadline for enrollment is March 15 and notes that producers have a couple of options with the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) or Price Loss Coverage (PLAC) programs. “For the Farm Program, we’ve been getting a lot of calls on that. You know, basically we have two option to look at, the PLAC or the county ARC. The nice thing about the Farm Program sign-up, it just goes for one year at a time, you sign up different units, and so there’s a lot of flexibility in it. Overall, I think the county ARC is the way that most of our producers are going for soybeans, on the corn side, kind of a flip of the coin. It just kind of matter if you think we’re going to have a dry year and prices will stay high, and yields may be down, then you look at that ARC. If you think we’re going to have a big crop and there will be a lot of price decline, then you then we look at probably the PLAC. So, bottom line on this thing is that, overall I don’t know if we’ll have a great chance of collecting with either one of those programs if these prices stay up and we get some good yields, but if we get that, that’s a good thing.”
Contact your local FSA office for questions and details.
