USDA Update

By Rod Johnson

December 17, 2004

The FSA Office Staff wants to take this opportunity to will all of you the happiest of the holiday season. We all have many blessings to be thankful for. The culture of our small rural area is such a treasure that we often take for granted and those in the big city can’t understand. Just spend a few days fighting the traffic in Denver and you will be reminded just how blessed we are!

Offices in the USDA Service center will be closed Friday, December 24 for the Christmas Holiday and Friday December 31 for the New Year’s Day Holiday. Both of these weeks, the office will be very short staffed so it would be best to call to make sure the person you need to talk to will be in the office before you make the drive. We should be back at full staff after January 3 and will get 2005 advance Direct Payments out as soon as possible.

If you had NAP (Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program) crops with production in 2004, you need to turn in production records to establish your APH (Actual Production History) for the crop. NAP crops are the crops on which you annually pay the $100 per crop for disaster coverage. Production records must be turned in for all crops except native grass pasture. If you have baled feed or grain in a bin you may need to have a measurement service performed to establish production. Now is a good time to get this done before you feed forage to your livestock. The deadline for furnishing 2004 NAP production is July 15, 2005 but it is best if you can do this as soon as possible.

I decided that two payment limitation issues we have worked on recently should be discussed in this column. First is the issue of a husband and wife being considered separate "persons" for payment limitation. Spouses may be considered separate persons and each have their own payment limitation for programs if neither spouse has a substantial beneficial interest in any entity (ie: corporation, trust, LLC, LLLP, etc) earning payment with a separate payment limitation. If either spouse has an interest in an entity that earns payment with a separate limitation, the husband and wife must be combined. One payment limitation determination applies to all programs.

The second payment limitation issue is, that a producer who becomes the owner of land enrolled in CRP by way of inheritance and succeeds to the CRP contract may receive payments for that contract without regard to the amount of payments received under any other contract executed before the inheritance. This provision also applies to an ownership interest in an entity received by way of inheritance if the entity was the owner of the land enrolled in CRP.

Telephone 719-438-5851 FSA (Ext 2), NRCS (Ext 3). E-mail individuals firstname.lastname@ co.usda.gov (Example rod.johnson@co.usda.gov, , walt.immer, nadene.gaynor, dawna.weirich, charla.ferris, marvin.watson, marlin.miller, brett.jones) Kiowa County FSA Web Site – http://www.fsa.usda.gov/co/County%20Webs/Kiowa_county.htm