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Jun 28, 2016
The American Soybean Association (ASA) and other farm organizations met with Val Dolcini, administrator of the Farm Service Agency (FSA), to discuss differences in payments to producers under the Agricultural Risk Coverage county option (ARC-CO) resulting from the use of different yield data.
Under the program, FSA uses National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) county yields, when published, to determine county revenue. If fewer than 30 producers in a county return the NASS survey, FSA uses Risk Management Agency (RMA) yield data. Discrepancies between payments occurred for 2014 crops, particularly corn, when the RMA yield in a county was higher than the NASS yields in adjacent counties. ASA is working with FSA to address these differences, possibly by using NASS yields in contiguous or comparable counties rather than default to using RMA yields. It is important to address this inconsistency in order to make ARC-CO more defensible going into the next farm bill debate. Fully 96 percent of soybean farmers enrolled in the program under the Agricultural Act of 2014.
