Happy New Year!
And happy January! A month focused on planning for the year ahead, attending winter conferences and meetings, and networking with friends and colleagues before the next farming season. I’m looking at my calendar and I can’t believe it’s the end of January already! I am excited about the year ahead and all the potential that 2024 holds for Pennsylvania agriculture and for Pennsylvania FSA.
Whether you are hunkered down in your home or enjoying a much-deserved break from the cold – FSA employees are busy getting ready for this upcoming year. In the coming weeks, I’m looking forward to spending time with farm organizations alongside our dedicated State Office management team. My travel schedule is filling up for the month ahead - Mid Atlantic Fruit and Veg Conference, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference, USDA Ag Forum in D.C., County Office visits and District Meetings. I look forward to seeing many of you out and about throughout Pennsylvania.
A reminder to producers interested in utilizing any of FSA’s loan programs, a great way to start is by using the loan application tool. This tool will help you determine what type of loan may best fit your needs and it has the added bonus of actually reducing the amount of information we use to require on an application. Farmers can access the Loan Assistance Tool by visiting farmers.gov/farm-loan-assistance-tool and clicking the ‘Get Started’ button.
Finally, 2024 might be the right time for you or someone you know to join the FSA team in Pennsylvania. We are advertising to fill vacant County Executive Director (CED) positions. We are currently advertising two location specific County Executive Director Trainees (CEDT’s) in the following two counties: Clarion and Somerset. Here is that job announcement which closes on February 2, 2024. We are also hiring 2 CEDT’s for future positions. Here is that job announcement which closes on February 5, 2024. Anyone inside or outside FSA can apply for one of those four openings. If hired, CEDT’s will receive one year of training. If you know someone who would be a good candidate for the County Executive Director position – please let them know about this great opportunity. You can also check out the job postings on USA Jobs for more information and to apply by the dates indicated. It is job opportunities like these, that highlight the historic investments and continued commitments to rural and urban Pennsylvania by Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration.
That’s all for this month – stay warm and safe. February is around the corner!
From my farm gate to yours,
Heidi Secord
State Executive Director
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Most farm loan borrowers will soon be able to make payments to their direct loans online through the Pay My Loan feature on farmers.gov in early February. Pay My Loan is part of a broader effort by USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) to streamline its processes, especially for producers who may have limited time during the planting or harvest seasons to visit a local FSA office; modernize and improve customer service; provide additional customer self-service tools; and expand credit access to assist more producers.
On average, local USDA Service Centers process more than 225,000 farm loan payments each year. Pay My Loan gives most borrowers an online repayment option and relieves them from needing to call, mail, or visit a Service Center to pay their loan installment. Farm loan payments can now be made at the borrower’s convenience, on their schedule and outside of FSA office hours.
Pay My Loan also provides time savings for FSA’s farm loan employees by minimizing manual payment processing activities. This new service for producers means that farm loan employees will have more time to focus on reviewing and processing new loans or servicing requests.
The Pay My Loan feature can be accessed at farmers.gov/loans. To use the payment feature, producers must establish a USDA customer account and a USDA Level 2 eAuthentication (“eAuth”) account or a Login.gov account. This initial release only allows individuals with loans to make online payments. For now, borrowers with jointly payable checks will need to continue to make loan payments through their local office.
FSA has a significant initiative underway to streamline and automate the Farm Loan Program customer-facing business process. For the over 26,000 producers who submit a direct loan application annually, FSA has made various improvements including:
- The Online Loan Application, an interactive, guided application that is paperless and provides helpful features including an electronic signature option, the ability to attach supporting documents such as tax returns, complete a balance sheet, and build a farm operating plan.
- The Loan Assistance Tool that provides customers with an interactive online, step-by-step guide to identifying the direct loan products that may be a fit for their business needs and to understanding the application process.
- A simplified direct loan paper application, which reduced loan applications by more than half, from 29 pages to 13 pages.
Financial assistance is being offered to agricultural producers and private landowners enrolled in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to improve the health of their forests. The Forest Management Incentive, available through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), can help participants with forest management practices, such as brush management and prescribed burning.
The Forest Management Incentive is available to participants with active CRP contracts with forest cover that are not within two years of expiring. The incentive is a payment to eligible CRP participants who properly completed authorized forest management practice activities to improve the condition of resources, promote forest management and enhance wildlife habitat.
Forest management practices include brush management, herbaceous weed control, prescribed burning, firebreaks, development of early successional habitat and forest stand improvement. Additional information is available in our Forest Management Incentive fact sheet.
Participants can now submit offers for the Forest Management Incentive. Interested producers should contact the FSA at their local USDA Service Center.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Pub. L. 117-169) and the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024 (Pub. L. 118-22), extended the authority and provided funding for the Forest Management Incentive until 2031.
The Forest Management Incentive was launched in 2020 and is one of the many natural resource conservation options available through CRP. Currently, the Forest Management Incentive has participants in 27 states.
Producers not currently participating in CRP can now submit offers for Continuous CRP. Learn more.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will conduct the annual Cash Rents and Leases survey starting Feb. 5. The survey provides the basis for estimates of the current year’s cash rents paid for irrigated cropland, non-irrigated cropland, and permanent pasture. Over 241,000 survey recipients across the United States, including more than 15,000 in the Northeastern Region, have been selected to participate in the survey, which can be completed online at agcounts.usda.gov, by mail or phone.
“Survey response from as many farm operators as possible ensures that cash rental rates accurately represent their locality,” said NASS’ Northeastern Acting Regional Director Charles Butler. “The data from the Cash Rents and Leases survey will also give landowners a useful tool in negotiating rental agreements and making other business decisions for their agricultural operations.”
Information from this survey is also used in the Farm Service Agency Conservation Reserve Program as an alternative soil rental rate prior to finalizing new rates each year.
In accordance with federal law, NASS keeps survey responses confidential. The data will be available in aggregate form only to ensure that no individual producer or operation can be identified. NASS will publish the state-level data on Aug. 2 and county-level data on Aug. 23 at quickstats.nass.usda.gov. For more information on NASS surveys and reports, call the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office at (717) 787-3904 or visit
www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Cash_Rents_by_County/index.php.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that agricultural producers can now enroll in the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs for the 2024 crop year. Producers can enroll and make election changes for the 2024 crop year starting Dec. 18, 2023. The deadline to complete enrollment and any election change is March 15, 2024.
On Nov. 16, 2023, President Biden signed into law H.R. 6363, the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024 (Pub. L. 118-22), which extended the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Pub. L. 115-334), more commonly known as the 2018 Farm Bill, through September 30, 2024. This extension allows authorized programs, including ARC and PLC, to continue operating.
2024 Elections and Enrollment
Producers can elect coverage and enroll in ARC-County (ARC-CO) or PLC, which provide crop-by-crop protection, or ARC-Individual (ARC-IC), which protects the entire farm. Although election changes for 2024 are optional, producers must enroll through a signed contract each year. Also, if a producer has a multi-year contract on the farm it will continue for 2024 unless an election change is made.
If producers do not submit their election revision by the March 15, 2024, deadline, their election remains the same as their 2023 election for commodities on the farm. Farm owners cannot enroll in either program unless they have a share interest in the cropland.
Covered commodities include barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed and wheat.
2022 Crop Year Payments
This fall, FSA issued payments totaling more than $267 million to agricultural producers who enrolled in the 2022 ARC-CO option and the ARC ARC-IC option for covered commodities that triggered a payment. Payments through the PLC option did not trigger for the 2022 crop year.
ARC and PLC payments for a given crop year are paid out the following fall to allow actual county yields and the Market Year Average prices to be finalized. These payments help mitigate fluctuations in either revenue or prices for certain crops. Payments for crops that may trigger for the 2023 crop year will be issued in the fall of 2024.
Crop Insurance Considerations
ARC and PLC are part of a broader USDA safety net that also includes crop insurance and marketing assistance loans.
Producers are reminded that ARC and PLC elections and enrollments can impact eligibility for some crop insurance products.
Producers on farms with a PLC election can purchase Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) through their Approved Insurance Provider; however, producers on farms where ARC is the election are ineligible for SCO on their planted acres for that crop on that farm.
Unlike SCO, the Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO) is unaffected by an ARC election. Producers may add ECO regardless of the farm program election.
Upland cotton farmers who choose to enroll seed cotton base acres in ARC or PLC are ineligible for the stacked income protection plan (STAX) on their planted cotton acres for that farm.
Web-Based Decision Tools
Many universities offer web-based decision tools to help producers make informed, educated decisions using crop data specific to their respective farming operations. Producers are encouraged to use the tool of their choice to support their ARC and PLC elections.
More Information
For more information on ARC and PLC, producers can visit the ARC and PLC webpage or contact their local USDA Service Center. Producers can also make elections and complete enrollment online with level 2 eAuth.
The Farm Loan teams in Pennsylvania are already working on operating loans for spring 2024 and ask potential borrowers to submit their requests early so they can be timely processed. The farm loan team can help determine which loan programs are best for applicants.
FSA offers a wide range of low-interest loans that can meet the financial needs of any farm operation for just about any purpose. The traditional farm operating and farm ownership loans can help large and small farm operations take advantage of early purchasing discounts for spring inputs as well expenses throughout the year.
Microloans are a simplified loan program that will provide up to $50,000 for both Farm Ownership and Operating Microloans to eligible applicants. These loans, targeted for smaller and non-traditional operations, can be used for operating expenses, starting a new operation, purchasing equipment, and other needs associated with a farming operation. Loans to beginning farmers and members of underserved groups are a priority.
Other types of loans available include:
Marketing Assistance Loans allow producers to use eligible commodities as loan collateral and obtain a 9-month loan while the crop is in storage. These loans provide cash flow to the producer and allow them to market the crop when prices may be more advantageous.
Farm Storage Facility Loans can be used to build permanent structures used to store eligible commodities, for storage and handling trucks, or portable or permanent handling equipment. A variety of structures are eligible under this loan, including bunker silos, grain bins, hay storage structures, and refrigerated structures for vegetables and fruit. A producer may borrow up to $500,000 per loan.
In this Ask the Expert, Tyler Kendall, management and program analyst for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) answers a few questions about USDA’s farmers.gov customer portal. Tyler helps lead the effort to provide personalized customer information via farmers.gov. A farmers.gov account provides self-service opportunities to Farm Service Agency (FSA) and NRCS customers through a secure, authenticated access process.
What features will conservation customers be most interested in?
There are several self-help options that allow you to access your conservation data from home or on your phone or tablet. For example, you can access, view, download, and print all of your conservation documents including your conservation plans, contracts, and plan maps. Contract documents can be conveniently eSigned in farmers.gov and the feature is mobile enabled so you can sign your documents from the field while on the go!
To read the full blog visit farmers.gov/blog/ask-the-expert-farmersgov-conservation-section-with-tyler-kendall.
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