USDA Announces Risk-Management Revisions Affecting Dairy

May 06, 2021

USDA on April 28 announced an update of its livestock insurance policies intended to improve options for producers and create additional opportunities for producers to participate. NMPF, which in the last Farm Bill played a critical role in allowing Risk Management Agency programs to allocate unlimited funds for dairy farmers to protect themselves against market volatility, urges dairy producers to consider the new provisions when making risk-management plans.

The USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) updates to the Dairy Revenue Protection (DRP) and Livestock Gross Margin (LGM) policies will be effective for the 2022 and succeeding crop years.

DRP, which covers about 30% of U.S. milk production, paid roughly $478 million to dairy producers in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic brought heightened volatility to markets. Changes for the 2022 crop year include:

Ensuring the Class Pricing Option remains available for purchase even when either the Class III or Class IV milk price is not published.
Relaxing records requirements by allowing monthly total pounds of milk and milk components (butterfat and protein) to be acceptable records instead of daily.
Modifying weekend sales period to end on Sunday at 9 a.m. Central Time.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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