Farm and Ranch
Chris Schneider: Farm bill decision-aid meeting scheduled
A new optional farm program, average crop revenue election, or ACRE, may present producers with more questions than answers, said Texas AgriLife Extension Service specialists.
AgriLife Extension will join with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency to hold a meeting at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the AgriLife Extension Johnson County Office located at 1 N. Main St., Ste 309, in Cleburne to explain the new program added by the 2008 Farm Bill.
ACRE is an alternative revenue-based safety net to the price-based safety net provided by counter-cyclical payments that begins with the 2009 crop year.
Careful consideration needs to be given before making a decision. A decision to elect ACRE may be made in any of the crop years 2009-12, but the ACRE election is irrevocable once a farm number is signed into the program.
Producers who choose to sign up for the ACRE program need to understand they will be giving up all of their counter-cyclical payment, as well as 20 percent of their direct payment, and a 30 percent reduction in their marketing loan rate.
ACRE payments will be made only when two conditions are met.
The first condition is met when the actual state revenue, price times yield, falls below the state ACRE guarantee.
The second is met when actual farm revenue falls below the farm ACRE guarantee.
The Texas A&M; Agricultural and Food Policy Center has developed an online software decision-aid program that will allow producers to enter all the necessary data to compare the possible benefits of ACRE with the possible costs of signing into the program.
The online program will enable a producer to enter his own data by FSA farm number, along with planting and price expectations.
The program will use the entered data to calculate the expected benefits of ACRE compared with what the producer has to give up to get those benefits.
Each producer should leave the meeting knowing how to access the program online and understand what data is needed and how to interpret the results.
Many factors determine whether the ACRE program will be beneficial to area producers and using the online software will help in the understanding of this complicated decision.
For more information contact the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Johnson County Office at 817-556-6370.
Chris Schneider is a County Extension Agent with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Johnson County who specializes in agriculture and natural resources.
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