(DTN) -- The Farm Service Agency is receiving more questions and challenges regarding county yields as farmers discover their commodity payments for 2014 aren't what they expected.
One of the most damaging issues facing producers in the Agricultural Risk Coverage-County program is when USDA declares a record county yield. High county yields can put farmers in that county out of the range for ARC-County payments.
It also raises questions about how the Farm Service Agency came up with that county yield, especially if there weren't enough voluntary yield surveys returned to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., have both raised concerns that farmers' failure to answer voluntary questionnaires has resulted in the farmers getting no payments or lower payments than they should under the new farm bill.
At issue in North Dakota is LaMoure County where the Farm Service Agency listed a 165-bushel-per-acre corn yield for 2014. That yield, a record in the state, translated into corn farmers getting zero ARC-County payments for 2014.
The 165-bushel yield used by FSA translated into farmers in LaMoure County losing a collective $7.5 million or so in ARC payments. Statewide, if the state committee were allowed to make corrections, it would translate into about $14 million to $15 million more in ARC-County payments for farmers.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service did not post a yield for LaMoure County in 2014 because only 27 farmers filled out the yield survey in the county. NASS needed at least three more surveys filled to publish a yield in the county. When NASS could not publish a county yield, the Farm Service Agency went to the Risk Management Agency to get a yield from crop insurers. RMA calculates yield by taking total production of crop insurance records and dividing that production total by the number of insured acres in the county.
An FSA spokesman stated Tuesday that the agency has several steps to use the highest-precision statistics possible. First, NASS data is used. Where that data doesn't exist, the next strongest set of data is county-level crop insurance from RMA. Where that data doesn't exist, NASS then uses district data. If NASS district data doesn't exist, then the FSA state committees provide data. "This process maintains accounting and audit integrity of the calculations," FSA stated to DTN.
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