FEATURE FARM BILL
2014 Decisions
WHAT DOES THE
Online tool helps producers choose
best options for their operations
FARM BILL
MEAN FOR YOU?
t
By Rachael Eilts
he 2014 farm bill has brought a lot
of major changes to the choices
and coverage options available to
producers. United Ag hosted a meeting to
help producers better understand this new
piece of legislation. The speaker was Dr. Joe
Outlaw, co-director of the Agricultural Food
and Policy Center at Texas A&M University.
Outlaw is frequently in Washington, D.C.
working on behalf of producers on farm bill
legislation.
“Dr. Outlaw has probably done more for
the farm bill than anyone in Texas,” said Jimmy Roppolo, United Ag’s general manager.
The farm bill offers producers several
choices. “Choice allows you to fine tune this
farm bill for you,” Outlaw said, noting that he
fought at Washington for options. However,
with choices comes decisions, and with decisions comes the need for analysis.
That’s where the decision aid developed by
Outlaw and his team at the Agricultural Food
and Policy Center comes in. “We don’t want
you to make these decisions by guessing,”
Outlaw said.
He said his team started building the tool
two years ago, before the farm bill was even
finished. He knew producers would have a
lot of decisions to make, and wanted them
14
Find the Agricultural Food & Policy
Center’s tool at usda.afpc.tamu.edu
to have the best resources possible to make
those decisions.
The decision aid uses data put in by producers to analyze the results of the various options
given to producers, such as agricultural risk
coverage versus price loss coverage. The tool
runs an analysis 500 times with different prices
to provide producers with average data to use
as a decision making tool.
The tool requires producers to enter information specific to his or her operation, most
of which can be found on insurance forms.
This includes yield data. Outlaw said the
more data entered into the tool, the more
accurate the results will be.
Outlaw stressed the need to perform as
much analysis as possible. He also advised
running the tool using bad prices to see
which option will provide producers with the
best protection.
“What’s going to help me when prices get
so bad they could knock me out of business?”
he said to ask, pointing out that produceres
do not need protection from high prices.
The tool includes all 21 crops covered by the
2014 farm bill. Cotton is no longer a covered
crop, but the tool does include cotton insurance options.
To help producers navigate the tool, Outlaw
has created a series of podcasts, which can be
found at www.afpc.tamu.edu/podcasts/fpm/.
He specifically reccommended Farm Policy
Minute No. 12 for help inputting data.
Outlaw said producers have a lot of decisions to make, including whether or not
to update yields. Reallocating base acres is
another important decision, as most bases
were set in 1985.
Another imporant thing to pay attention
to is deadlines. All of the decision making
means nothing if a producer misses his or her
opportunity to enroll in a program under the
farm bill.
The deadline to reallocate bases and update
yields is February 27, 2015. From November
17, 2014, to Marc