Katie Miller, AgCountry Farm Credit Services marketing education specialist, has some tips on signing up for the Market Facilitation Program, the program to provide China tariff relief. The tips on filing for grain, dairy and swine compensation are:

Grain
1. You can go into the Farm Service Agency office and sign up any time.

2. You will not be paid until the crop is harvested, but FSA will issue checks as soon as the yield for the reported commodity passes through County Committee guidelines. For example, when you are done with wheat harvest, FSA will pay the wheat check even if soybeans are not done.

3. You only need to file one application in your control county.

4. Each share will need a separate application. If you farm 60%/30%, you can only file on the share you own.

5. You need to sign up for the first payment to be eligible for the second possible payment. The payment rate on that second 50% will be decided on or about Dec. 3. FSA advises not skipping enrollment on lower paying commodities because it may render you ineligible for a later, and possibly larger, payment down the road.

6. The first payment is guaranteed. Even if the trade issue is solved tomorrow, these payments will be dispatched. This is true whether you sign up today or Jan. 14.

7. FSA does not defer payments. If you do not want money until after the first of the year, do not fill out part C of the application until after Jan. 1. However, you can sign part D (signature portion) at any time prior to Jan. 15.

8. You MUST enroll (sign part D) by Jan. 15. However, if you have acres that cannot be harvested yet this fall, you have until May 1 to report production (part C of the application).

9. Acres are eligible as long as they were certified as intended for grain use during acreage reporting. Any acres chopped for feed will have a conversion factor at FSA in order to determine yield. The same is true for wheat that was hayed.

10. All types of soybeans are eligible for a payment, including large and small seeded food-grade soybeans.

11. Once submitted, you can only revise your reported production lower. Even then, a revision is only considered if it is done prior to selection for a spot check. For example, if you report 100,000 bushels of beans and then discover you really had 106,000 bushels, there will be no payment on the additional 6,000 bushels you didn’t know about. On the other hand, if you report 100,000 bushels, haul them in and discover you only had 95,000, you need to report that to FSA and it needs to be done before any potential spot checks. If you are pulled for a spot check and your production is found to be too high you need to refund FSA the difference. Plus, there are over-reporting penalties involved.

Dairy
Production will be determined in the same method used for the Margin Protection Program. You will receive payment on the peak production determined by the MPP method from 2011, 2012, and 2013, as long as you were in operation on June 1, 2018. If a dairy is an entity, you can still only file on your share of production. If Farm A is owned 80% by dad and 20% by son, there has to be two applications.

Swine
USDA has determined that inventory on Aug. 1 isn’t necessarily representative of all producers’ inventories. If the Aug. 1 inventory is not representative of the number of head of hogs you own, you may choose any day from July 15 to Aug. 15 as the date for which ownership is reported. You will still need to prove inventory. You must still have had ownership of the hogs. If you already certified and this change affects them, you are allowed to re-certify. This is the only commodity being allowed to recertify.

Source: AgCountry Farm Credit Services