In a word – challenging.  This has been the theme since the farm bill passage last December so why would the harvest be any different?  Over the last three weeks our office has been deeply involved with conveying North Dakota issues to our D.C. counterparts, RMA administrators, and legislators.  We continue to try and find…

Supporting Prevented Plant Disaster Payments AIPs (Approved Insurance Providers) are preparing to support the Prevented Plant (PP) supplemental disaster payments, which is providing assistance to producers who were prevented from planting eligible crops due to excess precipitation, flood, storm surge, and other calamities in the 2019 crop year. (This is WHIP, Wildlife and Hurricane Indemnity…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that producers currently participating in federal crop insurance who had in 2019 a payable prevented planting indemnity related to flooding, excess moisture or causes other than drought will automatically receive a “top-up” payment. Producers will receive the payment from their Approved Insurance Providers (AIPs) starting in mid-October….

The Market Facilitation Program 2 was initially started in Senator Hoeven’s office shortly or even before MFP 1 was released. To date, the MFP 2 has released $2.5 billion of the $14.5 billion allocated. In North Dakota this is a mixed bag with a lot of counties not accepting applications at this time, or not…

We are in various stages of wheat harvest across the state.  Some have completed harvest, some just starting, and others are making the final push.  So far this year, we have seen scab, vomitoxin, falling numbers, sprout, and ergot. Still others are having the best crop of wheat quality they have had in years!  If…

We have been fielding a lot of phone calls in the past 2 weeks on quality issues in smalls grains with the ongoing harvest.  The main issues we are seeing in wheat is low test weight, high VOM and falling numbers.  All of these issues have a loss chart that applies discounts depending on the…

Harvest prices for Wheat and Barley have been tracking since Aug 1.  There are 7 days of trading left before the final prices are set.  We will post a revenue price trigger chart once the prices are finalized.  This will help in figuring revenue losses verse just production losses.

Background Farmers and ranchers are struggling through widespread severe flooding and excess moisture conditions in many parts of the nation, causing catastrophic damage to crops. Concerns have been expressed about the requirement to pay crop insurance premiums timely to avoid accrual of interest because some farmers and ranchers will not yet have received their crop…