Producers affected by natural disasters who filed prevented planting claims then planted an MFP-eligible cover crop, with the potential to be harvested or for subsequent use as forage, qualify for a $15 per acre payment. Acreage of cover crops must be planted by August 1, 2019 to be considered eligible for MFP payments.
Some questions have arisen since this morning and I’ll address those below:
1) People have asked if having an NRCS contract to plant cover crops on a field prevents you from being eligible for this MFP payment. According to Brad Karmen, a senior administrator at the USDA Farm Service Agency, which is the agency handling the MFP payments:
“Under MFP, cover crops planted after prevented plant acres are eligible for a $15 per acre payment to facilitate marketing. NRCS rules still continue to apply so that means a producer can receive a payment from both FSA and NRCS. The programs serve 2 different purposes.”
2) This MFP cover crop payment program is unique to 2019. The whole set of MFP payments this year are designed to help farmers deal with the impacts of tariffs that are affecting commodity prices. Cover crops got added into the mix in part because there are an estimated 15 million or more acres of fields that could not be planted due to wet weather (called “prevent plant” fields for crop insurance purposes).
3) There have been separately offered state-level NRCS programs announced earlier this summer to also encourage farmers to plant cover crops on prevent plant acres. Those state-level NRCS cover crop signups for prevent plant fields have rules that differ by state, and are only offered in some states. On the other hand, this USDA MFP program, through the Farm Service Agency, is available anywhere in the U.S. where there are prevent plant insurance claims, and the $15 rate per acre for cover crop planting applies in all states that have prevent plant acres. The payment will be available through FSA for cover crops planted in the last several weeks on prevent plant fields as well as any additional plantings on prevent plant fields by August 1st.
If you can, please let farmers in your area know they need to have their cover crops planted by August 1st if they want to be eligible for the $15 per acre MFP payment, and remind them that this program only applies on fields for which there has been a prevent plant crop insurance filing.
MFP signup begins Monday, July 29, at local Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices and concludes on Dec. 6, 2019.
The relevant USDA web information is at https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp then click on the tab for “How do payments work” and scroll down to see the cover crop payment information.