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ARC-CO barley payments changed for Cheyenne County

Farm Service Agency County Executive Director Brad Fraass announced a change Monday for the Agriculture Risk Coverage-County program for barley in Cheyenne County.

The Deputy Administrator for Farm Programs authorized the Nebraska FSA State Committee to determine Cheyenne County eligible for a separate calculation of revenues by irrigated and nonirrigated practice for purposes of calculating payments under the ARC-CO program. Prior to this change, blended yields and revenues would have been used to determine whether a loss occurred in Cheyenne County for barley in the ARC-CO program.

Impacted producers will soon receive letters from FSA informing them of this change, and provided a two-week time period to revise either the base reallocation or program election decisions they recently filed for the 2014 Farm Bill. Producers are not required to take any additional action if they remain satisfied with the reallocation and program election decisions they previously made.

Fraass said this change affects only the ARC-CO program.

Allowing for these separate revenue calculations means drought losses may trigger an ARC-CO payment on non-irrigated barley while in the same year irrigated barley does not reflect such a loss and does not trigger a payment. Conversely, a payment may be triggered for irrigated barley based on an average irrigated barley yield and a decline in price, while non-irrigated barley could potentially not trigger an ARC-CO payment if non-irrigated barley yields outperform historical averages at levels high enough to offset the price-side loss when evaluating the overall actual revenue.

If there is a shortfall in the county’s irrigated barley revenue for the year, the irrigated payment acres are used to calculate the ARC-CO payment. If there is a shortfall in the county’s non-irrigated barley revenue for the year, the non-irrigated payment acres are used to determine the ARC-CO payment.In years where a revenue shortfall exists, payments could be earned for one, or both, practices.

Other crops such as corn, wheat and sunflowers are not affected by this change for Cheyenne County.

 

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