Farm Service Agency announces important program updates

[January 24, 2013]  SPRINGFIELD -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency state executive director, Scherrie Giamanco, has announced that the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 extended the authorization of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (the 2008 Farm Bill) for many Commodity Credit Corp. commodity, disaster and conservation programs through 2013. FSA administers these programs.

Among the extended programs are the Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payment Program, known as DCP; the Average Crop Revenue Election Program, known as ACRE; and the Milk Income Loss Contract Program, known as MILC. The agency is preparing the following actions:

FSA will begin sign-ups for DCP and ACRE for the 2013 crops on Feb. 19. The DCP sign-up period will end on Aug. 2, and the ACRE sign-up period will end on June 3.

The 2013 DCP and ACRE program provisions are unchanged from 2012, except that all eligible participants in 2013 may choose to enroll in either DCP or ACRE for the 2013 crop year. This means that eligible producers who were enrolled in ACRE in 2012 may elect to enroll in DCP in 2013 or may re-enroll in ACRE in 2013 (and vice versa).

All dairy producers' MILC contracts are automatically extended to Sept. 30. Eligible producers therefore do not need to re-enroll in MILC. Additional, more specific details regarding certain modifications to MILC will be released soon.

FSA will provide producers with information on program requirements, updates and signups as the information becomes available. Any additional details will be posted on FSA's website.

[Text from file received from Illinois Farm Service Agency]