The Texas Farm Service Agency (FSA) is urging farmers to enroll in the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs before the Aug. 1 deadline. FSA representatives say most farmers do not realize they must enroll every year.
“Producers may have thought they have already taken care of ARC and PLC because they had already elected the program in which they want to participate,” Dave Sullivan, Texas FSA program analyst, said in an interview with the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “But every year they have to go in and enroll.”
FSA county committee nominations are also due Aug. 1.
To be eligible to serve on a FSA county committee, a person must participate or cooperate in a FSA-administered program, be eligible to vote in a county committee election and reside in the local administrative area where they are nominated.
“This is an important job for local farmers to get involved in our agency and every year our nomination period starts around June 15 and runs through Aug. 1,” Sullivan said. “We are certainly looking forward to getting nominations and hoping we can get more participation in our county committee program.”
The deadline to submit applications for the Cotton Ginning Cost Share Program is Friday, Aug. 5. These applications were pre-filled and mailed to cotton farmers who had certified cotton acreage in 2015. This is an “ad hoc program that the Agriculture Secretary did through his authority under CCC” and there is no guarantee that a program like this will ever come around again for cotton growers, Sullivan said.
Applications must be submitted in order to receive financial assistance to help overcome some of the costs incurred with ginning and the depressed cotton prices.
“If they do not have that, they need to be contacting their local office immediately to ensure that they sign up,” Sullivan said. “There are not going to be any late file provisions for this program so Friday is the absolute deadline.”
The enrollment deadline for the 2017 calendar year for the Margin Protection Program for Dairy is Sept. 30. The voluntary risk management program, which replaces the Milk Income Loss Contract program, was established in the 2014 Farm Bill. The program offers dairy producers catastrophic coverage.