Jill Lorang- Cascade County FSA Office gave these reminders in upcoming deadlines:

• It is the producer's responsibility to ensure that the FSA office has updated information regarding their operation. So questions that you should ask yourself are:

1. Do you have updated leases?
2. Have you leased any new land or dropped any leases, purchased or sold any land? Those changes need to be sent to the FSA office.
3. Have you changed any ownership shares in your entity?
4. Have you gifted shares to your kids or done any entity type structure changes? Those changes also need to be reported.

Loss of Livestock

With calving and lambing season here. I just wanted to remind producers that proof of death loss for normal and weather related losses is required when applying for the livestock indemnity program.

The loss due to abnormal weather events needs to be filed within 30 days of the loss

being apparent, and it covers both adult and non adult livestock. We would encourage ranchers to take date stamped photos with ear tags visible to document the death loss, and then also to document the weather at the time of the loss.

Hauling Feed or Livestock

The next program that I wanted to touch base on is if you're a rancher and you're hauling feed to livestock or livestock to feed as a result of the 2022 drought. A notice of loss needs to be filed with FSA for that transportation costs, and it needs to be filed within 30 days of the transportation occurring. It also needs to be filed before the beginning date of the grazing season. For example, Cascade County would be May 1st. So those notice losses need to be filed by May 1st.

ARC PLC Programs

FSA is in the process of enrolling producers into the 2023 ARC PLC program.

The deadline is March 15th

and this is an annual enrollment process. Producers have three options to choose from PLC. The program provides income support when the effective price for a commodity falls below its effective reference price. ARC-CO is the second option producers can choose and they trigger when the actual crop revenue of a covered commodity is less than the ARC-County guarantee. And ARC-IC is the third program that producers can choose from, and payments are issued when the producer’s actual crop revenue for all commodities planted on the farm is less than the ARC-IC guarantee. These programs are calculated on base acres. And for two of the programs, you do not have to have commodities planted to those acres to be eligible. Again, March 15th is the deadline for that program.

Crops not Covered by Insurance

FSA is completing the sign up for crops not covered under crop insurance. The deadline to obtain an insurance policy for spring planted crops is March 15th and an example of a spring planted crop not insured through crop insurance would be barley intended for hay.

New Programs

FSA also has two new programs that we just recently rolled out and they are called PARP. PARP provides assistance to producers who had a 15% revenue loss in 2020 when compared to 2018 or 2019 due to the pandemic. And then ERP Phase II is a disaster based program for producers who suffered a loss due to a qualifying disaster like drought in either 2020 or 2021. For this program, producers compare the benchmark year of 18 or 19 to the disaster year of 2020 or 2021. PARP and ERP Phase II are unique and a new way of implementing programs in that they are revenue based. Producers are encouraged to review their financial documents for both of these programs and view the online tool at farmers.gov to assist in gathering the numbers for their application. The deadline to apply for part in ERP Phase II is June 2nd, 2023. And then I just wanted to encourage everybody to go to farmers.gov for fact sheet and for the tools for ERP Phase two and for part farmers.gov has some great resources and then it'll help you walk through the steps that you're going to need to take to your FSA office.

If you have a story idea or something you want to learn more about, give Randy a call at 406-788-3003 or send me an email at randall.bogden@townsquaremedia.com