DCP and ACRE eliminated from 2014 Farm Bill
By GABLE RHOADS
It took six years for Congress to pass a new farm bill. "It’s a good thing it wasn’t longer or it would have been more complicated," quipped Sheridan County FSA Director Connie Jerome.
Jerome spoke at a 2014 Farm Bill informational meeting at the McClusky Community center on November 25.
Jerome told the assembled farmers that the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program (DCP) and the Average Crop Revenue Program (ACRE) have been eliminated so there will no longer be direct payments to farmers.
According to Jerome two new programs have replaced the old ones: a revenue protection program called Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and a price protection program, Price Loss Coverage (PLC).
Before enrolling in either ARC or PLC producers must decide whether or not to reallocate the base acres of a farm and they must update payment yields. Their base acres will then remain the same until 2018.
Jerome said the options for updating yields were to either retain current yields or to update yields. She recommended that farmers update the yields when a farm’s yields were below the substitute yield in a year between 2008-2012 or when a crop was planted in a year that the owner did not have a yield record. The deadline for this decision is February 27, 2015.
