Hello friends,
Fall is a wonderful time of year to appreciate how beautiful Ohio and Pennsylvania can be. As my farmers have been working long hours to try to complete their harvests, the fall colors have been just spectacular this year.
Of course, fall weather can be different from day to day, too. I know some of you have tried your best to get all your soft red winter wheat fields planted in between all the rains we have been having.
As you know, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation establishes final planting dates for insurable crops. These final planting dates are benchmarks to ensure that the crop is timely planted so it has a chance to develop to maturity. They are also used as a cutoff to determine if you were prevented from planting due to natural disaster conditions (like excessive rain).
You have 15 days after the established final planting date to report to your FSA office if you had some fields you were unable to plant. Farmers in 25 Ohio counties (Cuyahoga, Butler, Hamilton, Warren, Clinton, Clermont, Brown, Highland, Adams, Ross, Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Jackson, Lawrence, Gallia, Meigs, Athens, Morgan, Washington, Noble, Monroe, Guernsey, Belmont and Jefferson) had a wheat final planting date of Oct. 31.
That makes Nov. 15 their final date to visit their local FSA office to timely report prevented plantings.
Farmers that plant in the remaining 63 Ohio counties had a final wheat planting date of Oct. 20. That makes Nov. 4 their final date to visit their local FSA office to timely report prevented plantings. (Oops! If you are reading this and that date is past, still visit your FSA office — you will be given the option to late-file your report even after the Nov. 4.)
FSA defines prevented planting as the inability to plant the intended crop acreage with the proper management and equipment during the established planting period (for that crop type) because of a natural disaster. Visit your local FSA office if a natural disaster condition has prevented you from planting wheat this fall.
They will have you file an acreage report (FSA-578) to document where the affected fields are and complete form CCC-576, part B that documents what natural disaster condition you had. And last but not least, please be careful while harvesting — your family needs you safe and sound!
That’s all for now,
FSA Andy
