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| Michigan hosting January talks on choosing a crop protection |
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Michigan hosting January talks on choosing a crop protection
By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University extension and other groups are hosting presentations on farm bill Title 1 programs at numerous dates and locations across the state.
Although some of the meetings have already taken place, most will occur in January, according to Adam Kantrovich, an extension educator and member of Farm Information Resource Management (FIRM). FIRM is a longstanding organization that deals with management issues for the state’s farmers and is administering this program.
The bulk of the presentations will be given in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, where most of the state’s grain is grown. Kantrovich said someone from the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) will be present at most presentations, as will someone from the FIRM team. There will be about 60 sessions altogether, and more may be added.
Each presentation will discuss Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) choices as well as yield and base updating. People will also have a choice between ARC-county and ARC-individual.
“Do I reallocate my base acres?” Kantrovich said, thinking as a farmer. “Which program do I choose? PLC is more price-based, whereas the ARC programs are more revenue-based. It gets relatively complicated. I’ve seen people come in once, understand some of it, then come in a second time and really start to put all the pieces together.”
The profit and risk management implications of alternative choices will be explored under a range of assumptions, including historical yields relative to county yields and alternative price scenarios. Also, the “decision support” tool used in the analysis is available as Excel files from MSU extension.
The tool is a spreadsheet using Excel and is owned by MSU. It’s free for anybody to use; however, because it’s supposed to be specific to Michigan, it’s using Michigan-specific numbers. As such it might not mean quite the same thing for someone out of state, Kantrovich pointed out.
There are similar tools out of Texas A&M University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to Kantrovich, those decision support tools are bigger and meant to be national in scope.
FIRM received a grant from the USDA to conduct these informational sessions. “FIRM has been around for decades,” Kantrovich explained. “It’s made up of people who deal with farm management problems. We’re continually doing programs in various farm management issues.”
He pointed to the Telfarm program as one example of another run by FIRM. Telfarm provides farmers with an accounting program and business level financial advice, in exchange for a fee. FIRM can provide various consulting services, especially regarding financial and tax issues.
“We’ve had farms on this program for the past 70 years,” Kantrovich said. “Other states have their versions of this program. We can compare how a farm is doing compared to that farm’s peers on a nationwide basis.
“People can see if they have an issue coming on, way before the bank comes calling. We can really help make plans for their farm. Telfarm is a very good and important service.”
In addition to MSU extension and FSA, other sponsors of the farm bill Title 1 program presentations include the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, Michigan Soybean Promotion Committee, Michigan Wheat Program, Greenstone Farm Credit Services and Farm Bureau Crop Insurance.
To see where and when presentations are taking place -- and to register, go online at http://events.anr.msu.edu/FarmBill1415
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| 12/17/2014 |
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