2019 Crop Insurance and FSA Reminders – Farmers should act soon
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EmailCrop producers need to contact their crop insurance and FSA offices soon to ensure they are signed up for several programs.
Many crop insurance and FSA sign up deadlines for crop producers occur in December, regardless of whether all crops are harvested. MSU Extension has complied the following list of selected reminders for crop producers. If you cannot get in the fields, now is a good time to utilize this time to get some of these tasks completed.
Crop Insurance
- Potential yield loss claims must be made within 15 days after finishing harvest for that crop. If there is only a revenue loss, you have 45 days after the price is set for that crop. In Michigan, deadlines are: December 15 for soybeans and January 15 for corn.
- If corn and soybeans are not harvested by December 10, you may be able to file for an extension of time to harvest. You may also be granted an extension of time to complete harvest rather than appraise the crop at that time. Once the appraisal is completed in the field, further losses are not insured.
- If you do not file a claim by the December 10 deadline, you may not be eligible for a claim even if you have a loss.
- If you have completed harvest, get your crop production report forms filled out and sent to your crop agent right away.
- Wheat acreage reports and production reports were due by November 15. If you have not sent these in, do it now.
FSA Reminders
- Determine if you should update your PLC yields at the FSA office. The 2018 Farm Bill gives a one-time opportunity to update your PLC payment yield. The update is 81% of your 2013 thru 2017 average yields for corn and soybeans. 85.61% for wheat yields. You can use crop insurance records to do this. Use the 10-year APH history mailed to you annually by your agent.
- Sign up now for the ARC/PLC decision. You can change the decision up until March 15, 2020.
MSU Extension has partnered with local FSA offices to offer multiple Farm Bill Meetings across the Michigan during December 2019 and January 2020.
At these meetings producers will:
- Hear highlights of the 2018 Farm Bill and assessments of today’s market compared to five years ago.
- Learn about the process of updating their yields with FSA.
- Work through case examples using the MSU Extension 2018 Farm Bill Calculator to help make better decisions on ARC versus PLC (Each crop and FSA farm number may result in a different choice.).
- Discuss specific program details with local FSA staff.
Speakers include both MSU specialists/educators as well as your local FSA staff. For a complete listing of locations, dates and times, please visit our MSU Events page at https://events.anr.msu.edu/farmbill/.
