Hot Topics: Prevent Plant, Covid-Ag Aid & Farm Bill Reminders

Prevent Plant Refresher Information
Prevent Planting is the failure to plant the insured crop acreage due to an insured cause of loss by the final planting date or by the end of the late planting period (25 days after the final plant date for most crops). Prevent Plant must be due to an   insured cause of loss and general to the area. If you have prevent plant (PP), you must notify the insurance provider within 72 hours after the final planting date or during the late planting period when you determine that you will not be planting the crop. You must also notify FSA of any PP acres within 15 days after the final planting date. See the tables on page 2 for final planting dates by county and please give us a call if you have any prevent plant questions.

• PP must be common to the area. Failure to plant when other producers in the area are planting could result in the denial of the PP claim.
• PP acres must exceed 20 acres or 20% of the crop in that unit to qualify. If you have Enterprise Unit selected for a crop, it would be a total of 20 acres for the crop in the county.
• PP acres must be insurable and physically available for planting. Land that has not been planted, harvested and insured in at least 1 of the 4 most recent crop years is considered not available to plant and is not eligible for PP. Once the land becomes ineligible for PP, it must be planted, harvested and insured in 2 consecutive years to regain PP eligibility.
• Land emerging from CRP or New Breakage is not eligible for PP the first year. It must be planted, harvested and insured before it is eligible for PP coverage.
• Any PP acreage within a field that contains planted acreage will be considered the same crop that is planted, unless a two crop history requirement is met or rotational requirements are not met.
• Maximum eligible PP acreage by crop/type/variety is the highest number of certified acres seeded and/or prevented planting in the last four years. Eligible acres will generally be increased proportionately to any added/new insurable cropland acreage.
• Maximum eligible acres of a contracted crop are the minimum number of acres specified in the processor’s contract.
• If all eligible acres of a crop have been used, remaining PP will roll to the crop with the next most similar PP payment, however, the payment will be capped so it will not exceed the payment of the original PP crop.
• PP is based on the Projected Price and is not recalculated with the Harvest Price.
• In order to receive PP on added land, the cause of loss must have occurred after 3/15 or the land was added to the operation, if after that date. You may need to provide your contract to the insurance company to show when the land was added. You will also need to prove that the land had been planted, harvested and insured in one of the past 4 years by obtaining FSA or prior insurance documents on the added land.
• If you have added land in a new county after March 15, an intended acreage agreement can be submitted within 10 days of obtaining the new acreage to establish eligibility. A cause of loss cannot be present when adding acreage in the new county. For Added Land, an insured may need to provide previous FSA and insurance records to prove insurability of the acreage.

PP Pmt Example: Soybean APH = 40 bus; Cov Level= 75%; MPCI Spring $ = $9.17
Prevent Plant Pmt: 40 bu x 75% cov level x 60% PP factor x $9.17 = $165.06/Ac

Covid-19 Ag-Aid Package (4/17/2020)
On Friday, April 17^th, USDA announced an aid package aimed at helping farmers and ranchers who have been adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program includes $16 billion in direct support to farmers and ranchers as well as $3 billion in targeted food purchases. The hard-hit livestock industry will receive around $9.6 billion in direct payments, while row crop producers will receive $3.9 billion. Sign up for the program will likely be through FSA, similar to past programs. As of now there are no program details available but we will be sure to pass them along once they are released. The payment limit will be $125,000 per commodity with an overall limit of $250,000. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Purdue, stated that there will most likely be more aid announced in the coming months.

Farm Bill Reminders
PLC YIELD UPDATE – yields are eligible to be updated for the 2020 crop year on a crop by crop basis depending on your base acres. The update will use yields from the 2013-2017 crop years. The deadline to update yields is September 30, 2020. 

ARC-IC YIELD REPORTING – If you signed up any of your farms for the ARC-IC program, the deadline to report yields for the 2019 crop year is July 15, 2020. You will need to report the 13-17 yields as well as your 2019 yields on all program crops you grew on farms enrolled in ARC-IC. 

PLC Marketing Year Average Projected Prices (As of 4/9/20)
WHEAT = $4.60/Bu→ Projected payment of $0.90/Bu. (Ref. Price = $5.50) NOTE: Marketing year ends May 31^st
CORN = $3.60/Bu→ Projected payment of $0.10/Bu. (Ref. Price = $3.70)     NOTE: Marketing year ends Aug. 31^st
SOYBEANS = $8.65/Bu→ No projected payment (Ref. Price = $8.40)           NOTE: Marketing year ends Aug. 31^st