By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Farmers are faced with some of their most important decisions ever in the 2014 Farm Bill.
K-State agricultural economists Drs. Mykel Taylor and Art Barnaby are hosting 15 in-depth educational meetings across the state to help farmers better understand the details. Hundreds of people are turning out at each event.
The pair, teamed with representatives from the federal Farm Service Agency and several sponsors, was in Hays Wednesday speaking to producers and landowners at the K-State Ag Research Center.
Once a commodity program is chosen, the farm is locked in for five years.
“That’s a long time to live with your decision,” said Dr. Taylor, “and this is the first Farm Bill people have been given a choice between three different programs.”
“I think the biggest question we’ve been getting is ‘How are we supposed to make this decision when the payouts from the programs are dependent on the prices and what happens with yields in future years,’ ” Taylor said.
“Of course, none of us can say what payouts are going to be in future years and that’s a concern. So, we’re just trying to help people understand how these programs are going to work and we run through different scenarios–if prices are really low, or if prices are really high, and if we have a bad yield year and so on–so they can make a decision based on their own farm, their financial situation and their risk preferences. We’re helping them customize this as best we can.”
Farm Bill 2014 also has significant improvements to crop insurance, according to Taylor.
K-State Research and Extension and Oklahoma State University have developed a new Excel-based online tool to help ag producers make decisions as they examine their options.
Taylor said the agmanager.info website has “really expanded the reach of the Farm Bill information to out-of-state landowners who can not attend an information session in person.”
The Hays morning meeting filled up with attendees, including one man from Maryland whose family’s land is in Trego County, so organizers added an afternoon session for which 150 people signed up.
The USDA says farmers have until March 31 to sign up with one of the commodity programs, which include wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops.