by Ben Nuelle
Senator Chuck Grassley is sending a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack addressing the Agriculture Risk Coverage or ARC program. Grassley says he?s heard from Iowa farmers who are frustrated about payment discrepancies in adjacent counties of each other.
In Grassley?s letter to Vilsack, he is asking about how county yields are measured for the ARC program. USDA?s Farm Service Agency offers this program to farmers and was established under the 2014 Farm Bill.
Grassley says the formula used to determine ARC payments is composed of two factors.
?One is the average marketing year price and the other is the average county yield. I?ve heard from farmers at my town hall meetings. They were asking how county yields have been determined because there are some instances where we have great discrepancies in payments between adjacent counties.?
He says there were four instances of payment discrepancies in 2014.
?Calhoun county got $23 per acre, Pocahontas got $91 per acre and two counties got about $72 per acre. Webster County to the east of Calhoun got $46 which is double the payment farmers got there in the adjacent county of Calhoun.?
USDA has also addressed this issue in North Dakota.
Grassley says when congress designed the ARC program under the Farm Bill they set broad parameters letting the administration fill in the regulations.
?From the language in the bill on the ARC program, I don?t think there?s any way a member of congress could have seen the discrepancy. You might from one of the state to the other but not adjacent counties. I don?t think that would be possible. If it were possible for us to see that, then it wouldn?t have happened in the first place.?
