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by Susie Taylor

Signing up for the new federal farm program may seem complex and difficult, at best. But the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be, and you may just shut yourself out of the benefits and opportunities the new program can offer.

As of late February, only about one-third of eligible producers had signed up to participate in programs established by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. With a deadline of April 1 in place for producers to establish bases and yields on their farms, there is concern that there aren’t enough appointments at the county Farm Service Agency offices to accommodate those producers who haven’t signed up.

The complexity of the new programs may be the culprit, but information could be the solution. To encourage more producers to learn as much as possible about the new sign-up process, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) co-sponsored a call-in radio show on WRFD AM-880 on Feb. 17 during the station’s daily farm programming. Other co-sponsors of the program were Ohio’s offices of the Farm Service Agency and Ohio State University.

A panel of experts was available to explain changes in this year’s sign-up process and answer callers’ questions. OFBF Director of Corporate Communications Joe Cornely was the show’s moderator. Panel participants were Constance Jackson, OFBF vice president of agricultural ecology; Rick Borland, Farm Service Agency chief program specialist; and Barry Goodwin, Ohio State University Andersen’s professor of economics.

To start the radio program, Cornely quipped the sign-up process wasn’t brain surgery or rocket science – "it’s harder."

"There are new rules of the game," Borland said. "I think we found that one contract for seven years just didn’t work. Now we’re requiring farmers to come in every year to design a contract and to determine if they want to participate for each of the six years of the program."

Jackson echoed Borland’s comments. "This is an unusual opportunity for producers to update bases and yields. There are a multitude of options available to producers to work to their advantage."

That "multitude," which in the past was limited, now offers producers five options, some of which allow soybean acres to be added in the mix. According to Jackson, "Producers have five options, and they need to take the time to work through those options to determine which is best for their operations. Another thing that’s different is the inclusion of soybeans and oilseeds in base acres. Previously those oilseed payments were separate; now they’re included in the base, and producers need to establish the base and yield for their soybean acres."

So why had only about one-third of the operations in Ohio completed the sign-up process by mid-February?

"The complexity of the program has caused a lot of farmers to misunderstand what’s required of them," Borland said. "And our FSA software is so cumbersome. I really applaud the county offices. The process has been very time consuming."

The five options, as explained in an OFBF 2002 Farm Bill fact sheet, allow producers to keep their current 2002 Production Flexibility Contract acreage base and add soybeans or to update bases by using 1998-2001 planted and considered planted acreage for all crops on a farm serial number basis. Broken down, here are the five options:

• Option 1 – Only present PFC acres with no soybeans (keep current bases)
• Option 2 – Add soybeans with offsetting PFC acres (keep current base and backfill with oilseeds)
• Option 3 – Add soybeans with maximum PFC offset (maximize oilseeds and reduce current bases to keep total with cropland)
• Option 4 – Establish new bases using the average of the 1998-2001 plantings of all covered crops
• Option 5 – Establish bases keeping some as is, reducing or eliminating some, and adding oilseeds to fill in

If producers take no action before the April 1 deadline, those producers who raised soybeans will see their farms default to Option 2. If no soybeans were produced, the default is Option 1.

"It’s necessary for producers who want to establish new bases and yields to do so by April 1," Borland cautioned. "Some counties are already booked to April 1. We’ve received verbal confirmation that we’ll be using a register after the April 1 deadline, but producers will need to be on that register before April 1."

If producers do wish to establish new bases and yields, they must have the records to show what those yields and base acres have been for each farm they’ve worked. "There’s a big requirement of the producer in establishing these yields," Borland said. "They need to have updated records, and that’s what can be time consuming."

Working through each of the five options to determine what’s best for each farm can also seem like climbing Mount Everest, but it needs to be done, Jackson said.

But the first priority for producers is to make appointments with their FSA offices.

"(The USDA) is not going to let that register go into effect unless all available appointments up to April 1 have been taken," Jackson said. "Then producers can make sure they have all the paperwork and records pulled together."

Producers can go online to work through the options themselves before their appointments to get a better handle on the process. Ohio State has a "calculator" available on its Web site as do Texas A&M and USDA. You can access each of those calculators through the Featured Links section of OFBF’s Web site at www.ofbf.org. And if you don’t have Internet access, you can get assistance through your county Extension office.

"If you’re prepared when you go into the FSA office, it won’t take that long," Jackson said.

One way to be prepared is to have new Powers of Attorney signed by owners of any land you rent. Landowners have a vested interest in whether or not their land is included in the new farm program, according to Ohio State’s Goodwin.

"More than half of U.S. farmland is operated by someone other than the owner," Goodwin said. "If anything, the farm program raises profitability and lowers risk. … We’ve got estimates that if we didn’t have the current farm policy, land values would be about 30 percent lower. "

Added Goodwin: "This has been an interesting year. We’ve got a large and quite generous bill with $190 billion over 10 years. There are some substantial increases in support, but not quite as substantial as intimated by opponents of the farm bill. The three major pillars of support for commodities are fixed payments, marketing loans and counter-cyclical payments. And there are a lot of large increases for conservation provisions, which demonstrate a shift in philosophy for conservation lands."

Other links to sites offering information about the 2002 Farm Bill are available through Featured Links on the OFBF Web site.

Cutline: Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Director of Corporate Communications Joe Cornely, right, moderated a radio program on WRFD AM 880 on sign-up for the new farm program. Panel members who answered questions were, l to r, Rick Borland, Farm Service Agency chief program specialist; Constance Jackson, OFBF vice president of agricultural ecology; and Barry Goodwin, Ohio State University Andersen’s professor of economics. (Photo Courtesy WRFD radio)