The month of July brings many important deadlines for farmers and ranchers. Carl Josefy, a county Farm Service Agency Executive Director from Oklahoma, says producers need to be aware of a few upcoming deadlines.
Josefy; “We’ve got a hard deadline coming up on July 17th. That will be the acreage reporting deadline for all spring and summer crops, your CRP (Conservation Reserve Program), your fruits and vegetables, pecans, grass acres, and any other cropland, even if you didn’t utilize it for anything, it needs to be reported as idle so that all of your acres are reported for the year.”
Another hard deadline, Josefy said, is July 14th; “Friday, July 14 is the deadline for producers to sign up for the ERP (Emergency Relief Program) phase two and the PARP (Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program) programs. ERP is the Emergency Relief Program phase two, which was intended for those producers who may or may not have gotten the payment under ERP phase one for disasters that occurred during 2021 and or 2022.”
ERP is a revenue-based program, and producers will need to visit with their accountants, their CPA, an attorney, or whoever does their taxes to see if they qualify for that program.
Josefy says; “PARP is a program that is also a revenue program that is only applicable for the 2020 crop year. It is also a program that looks at the loss of revenue when compared to 2018 and 2019, but it is it’s only for the pandemic that has that occurred during 2020 when we first came out with the COVID issue and all the things that affected markets for livestock and crops.”
The revenue that counts under one program, Josefy said, may not be the revenue that counts under another; “There’s a lot of detail in each program that producers need to know about, and the safest way to look at those would be to look at the fact sheets there that are available online or go into your local FSA county office and ask for the fact sheets that describe each one of those programs. It varies from county to county, from state to state, so every producer needs to be on their own and look at those programs.”
There have been some changes that are occurring for those producers who are reporting their acres by Monday, July 17th, Josefy said, because when producers report their summer crops, sometimes they have more acres or fewer acres of those summer crops than they did in the previous year.
Finally, he talks about what producers need to do who have faced damage to their livestock due to storms. Josefy says; “If you have that situation, the very first thing you need to do is document it and maybe even have a witness document it with you. Documentation could include pictures and or video of the dead animals. You’ve got to tell us within so many days when the loss occurred, preferably within 15 to 30 days, let us know that the loss occurred. You can call the office and just phone us right when you notice the loss occurred, and we’ll document it, and then you’ve got a record.”
He says that’s just the first step in the process, and you should contact your local FSA office to learn more.
Story provided by KC Sheperd, Radio Oklahoma Network, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and NAFB News Service