Farm Progress

USDA's Farm Service Agency assigns numbers to farms for farm program purposes.

January 29, 2014

6 Min Read

If you recently purchased land, you must bring your property deed to your local Farm Service Agency office, as the system may not be updated to recognize your name associated with your property.

Be prepared for FSA to perform random spot checks to verify that you are doing what you claim to be doing on your farm, especially if you signed up for a program.

Getting a farm number is NOT the same as getting agricultural tax exemption. To do this, you need to register with the NC Department of Revenue.

(Originally Published: April 18, 2011)
FAQ: It seems like every year I have a different farm number assigned to my farm by the USDA Farm Service Agency for farm program purposes. My local office says this is the result of a reconstitution. Why is that? Why can't I keep my old numbers?

Answer: Provided by Beth Grabau, public relations and outreach specialist at the USDA's Farm Service Agency state office in Des Moines. Program specialist Kevin McClure also assisted with these answers.

For Farm Service Agency purposes, a reconstitution or recon is the process of combining or diving farms and/or tracts based on the farming operation. Recons can be initiated by the owner, operator or the local County Farm Service Agency Committee. When changes in ownership and/or changes in an operation take place, a farm reconstitution is necessary.

It starts with the parent farm(s) and combines or splits this farm into a new resulting farm number. The resulting farm is physically different therefore a new number is needed. Changes to a tract may not affect the farm number.

Question: How is a recon done?
During the recon process, farms are combined or divided. A combination is when two or more farms and/or tracts are combined together. Basically Farm Service Agency adds up the cropland and the base acres of the farms and creates a new farm number. The individual tracts of land with their cropland are just transferred to the new farm number. We could combine tracts, but they are part of a farm number, so in a tract combination, the farm number would not change.

Related: What USDA Farm Service Agency Can Do For You

Note: Farms are made up of tracts. Every farm has at least one tract, and could have more than one. A tract of land is generally field(s) connected in the same section of a township with common ownership. One tract of land could have any number of fields.

Farm Service Agency also does recons to split a farm and/or tracts. An example: An 80 acre field is owned by jointly two parents, they decide to transfer ownership of 40 acres to each of their two children. They would divide this tract of land, the 80, based on the footages or legal description on the deed, into two 40 acre tracts for this farm. The farm number can stay as is. However, if the new owners want separate farm numbers, they would divide the farm into two farms, with two new farm numbers. Each tract would have the cropland (taking out waterways, building sites, etc.) and the associated acreage base.

Find Your Local Farm Service Agency By State

Question: How do I initiate a recon? Is there a deadline? What happens if I've already signed up for the farm program this year?

Recons can be requested anytime. This request is done by visiting your local office. If the recon involves changes in ownership, copies of the filed deeds will also need to be provided to the local office.

To be effective for the current year, recons must be requested by August 1 for a farm enrolled in a specific program. The final date to sign up for DCP or the Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payment program is June 1. So it's important that you are enrolled on the parent farm(s) before that date.

This will ensure that you can enroll the resulting farm number into DCP in the event the recon is not completed until after June 1. If the farm has been signed up and paid the DCP advance payment, then this money will need to be refunded before the recon can be completed. The advance payment will be reissued under the new farm number.

Question: A combination is pretty self explanatory, but are there different ways a farm can be divided?

Unless instructed otherwise, county Farm Service Agency office staff will complete a recon using the default method, which means that a farm will basically take with it the base that is brought to a previous combination. If a previous recon hasn't been done, the DCP cropland method will be completed, or the division will be prorated on the DCP cropland. The following are different methods that can be used when doing a farm division.

Estate method: This is the division of bases, allotments and quotas for a parent farm among heirs in settling an estate.

Designation of landowner method: This may be used when: 1) part of a farm is sold or ownership is transferred, or 2) an entire farm is sold to two or more persons, or 3) farm ownership is transferred to two or more persons, or 4) part of a tract is sold or ownership is transferred, or 5) a tract is sold to two or more persons, or 6) tract ownership is transferred to two or more persons. In order to use the designation of landowner method the land that was sold must have been owned for at least three years, or a waiver granted, and buyer and seller must sign a Memorandum of Understanding.

Related: What USDA Farm Service Agency Can Do For You

DCP cropland method: This is used when the division of bases is in the same proportion that the DCP cropland for each resulting tract relates to the DCP cropland on the parent tract.

Default method: This is used when division of bases for a parent farm with each tract maintaining the bases is attributed to the tract level when the reconstitution is initiated in the system.

Summing up: This can get confusing. If you have questions about FSA farm numbers or reconstituting farms and fields for USDA program purposes, visit your local FSA office.

If you have specific questions or need details regarding USDA farm programs, contact your local Farm Service Agency office. You can also get news and information about DCP, ACRE and other USDA programs at www.fsa.usda.gov.

Two Iowa State University Extension Web sites have farm program information and analysis. They are ISU's Ag Decision Maker site at www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm and ISU Extension Specialist Steve Johnson's site at www.extension.iastate.edu/polk/farmmanagement.htm.

And be sure to read the regular column "Frequently Asked Questions about the Farm Program" that appears in each issue of Wallaces Farmer magazine and at www.WallacesFarmer.com

Find Your Local Farm Service Agency By State

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