COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With the passage of the 2014 farm bill, which authorizes U.S. agricultural and nutrition programs through 2018, major changes are coming to crop safety net programs, said an economist from Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
The new legislation ends direct payment subsidies and requires farmers to choose between three new risk management-oriented programs: the Agriculture Risk Coverage county level (ARC-CO) program, the Agriculture Risk Coverage individual farm program (ARC-IC), and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program, said Carl Zulauf, an economist in the college’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics.
The ARC programs replace the Average Crop Revenue Enhancement Program (ACRE) while PLC replaces the price counter-cyclical program, Zulauf said. The USDA continues to roll out the rules for these programs and the decisions that producers have to make, he said.
Zulauf will discuss his latest analysis related to the farm bill during this year’s Farm Science Review Sept. 16-18 at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center near London, Ohio. Zulauf will participate in the Review’s “Question the Authorities” question-and-answer sessions offered daily at the three-day agricultural trade show.
Zulauf will field farm bill questions at noon and 1:40 p.m. on Sept. 16, 10:40 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 17, and at 9 a.m., 11:20 a.m., noon and 12:40 p.m. on Sept. 18. The 15- to 20-minute sessions will take place in the Ohio State Area in the center of the main Farm Science Review exhibit area.
“Question the Authorities” offers participants the opportunity to ask a range of general or technical questions related to their farm enterprise and offers an easy way for producers to interact with OSU Extension experts, organizers said.
“Our discussion will provide an overview of the new programs as well as focus on considerations that farmers will want to make as they decide how to move forward with their farm program decisions,” Zulauf said. “In what currently looks like a lower price-lower revenue year, payments by these programs may be important for the financial health of the farm.
“After a number of years of high revenue and prices, farmers are in the process of rediscovering that the farm safety net involves commodity programs as well as crop insurance.”
Sponsored by CFAES, the Review features educational workshops, presentations and demonstrations delivered by experts from OSU Extension and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, which are the outreach and research arms, respectively, of the college.
Source: Ohio State University