Ag producers face March 15 deadline to enroll in safety net programs

    Agricultural producers have until March 15 to sign a contract for the Agriculture Risk Coverage or Price Loss Coverage programs.
    The U.S. Department of Agriculture offers these two safety net programs to provide vital income support to farmers experiencing substantial declines in crop prices or revenues.
    “The Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs provide critical financial protections to many American farmers” said Zach Ducheneaux, Administrator of USDA’s Farm Service Agency.
    Producers can elect coverage and enroll in ARC-County or PLC, which are both crop-by-crop, or ARC-Individual, which is for the entire farm.
    Although election changes for 2022 are optional, producers must enroll through a signed contract each year. Also, if a producer has a multi-year contract on the farm and makes an election change for 2022, it will be necessary to sign a new contract, he said.
    Producers have completed 976,249 contracts to date, representing 54% of the more than 1.8 million expected contracts.  
    Producers who do not complete enrollment by the deadline will not be enrolled in ARC or PLC for the 2022 crop year and will not receive a payment, if triggered.
    Producers are eligible to enroll farms with base acres for the following commodities: barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium and short grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed and wheat.