Hello again,
Halloween is next week, and I never know what to expect either at home or at the office. The kids come up with some pretty far-out ideas sometimes. They must think I have about three engineering degrees to make these costumes work the way they want.
The office is a little different. If the staff wears costumes, they are usually very understated.
I think there is always the fear in the back of your mind that you will be the only one dressed up and that your co-workers are playing a joke. (Not that anyone in my office would do that … wink, wink).
We have some pretty funny farmers in our county, as well. Sometimes, jokes are based in reality. A farmer told me the other day he made the best hay of the year just a few weeks ago.
I laughed. He didn’t.
He was serious
The constant rain in the spring prevented him from making his first cutting timely, and then once that was complete, dry weather in July/August hindered his yield. Finally, the rain and warm temperatures in September were almost a perfect combination for new growth.
The life of a farmer. No two years exactly alike.
As he was telling me about his late hay harvest, that gave me the opportunity to remind him that reporting dates for perennial forage changed last year at FSA. For a long time, hay not covered by a NAP policy could be reported in the spring with your corn and soybeans.
This past year, FSA got together with the Risk Management Agency to try to consolidate reporting dates. The thinking is that there would be less confusion if FSA and Crop Insurance has matching deadlines.
Crop insurance
In this case, the agreement was to use the Crop Insurance deadline for perennial forages. So for Ohio and Pennsylvania, the 2018 perennial forage needs to be reported to FSA by Nov. 15.
Producers may want to take this opportunity to discuss loss coverage under the Noninsured crop disaster Assistance Program (NAP) with their local FSA folks. This long-time program has greatly improved with the addition of a quality option for your mechanically harvested forage acres.
Quality determinations are based on the Relative Feed Value. This RFV can be easily identified with a relatively inexpensive forage test.
If you have taken forage tests in the past, bring one with you when you report your forage acres. Your FSA personnel can show you how this can affect a claim calculation and if the NAP coverage is something that may work for you.
Oh, and if you have winter wheat planted this fall, you can always report that at the same time as your forage. This will save you a trip to beat the Dec. 15 wheat reporting deadline.
That’s all for now,
FSA Andy
