Several farm state Senators are raising questions about how USDA’s Farm Service Agency calculates county yields. This is due to the large variance in government payments from county-to-county. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he has heard from farmers in his town hall meetings about the big discrepancies even between adjacent counties under the ARC program.
Payments are currently figured on an average marketing year price and an average county yield. However, those yields have been based on NASS data which is scarce or unreported in some counties. North Dakota Senator John Hoeven says that may be keeping some farmers from getting an ARC payment when they’re entitled to one.
Hoeven says he’s talked to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack about the problems with ARC to see if there is anything USDA or FSA can do administratively.
South Dakota Senator John Thune says they don’t want to reopen the farm bill to make changes and so they’re working with USDA to make the program more responsive in these low price times.
Thune says they also want the ARC payments figured on the physical location of the field verses the administrative county of the farmer.
