Farm Service Agency December 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) is requesting comments from all interested individuals and organizations on an extension of a currently approved information collection that supports the 2017 Wildfires and Hurricanes Indemnity Program (WHIP) and the Quality Loss Adjustment (QLA) Program. FSA provides payments to eligible producers who suffered eligible crop, tree, bush, and vine losses resulting from a qualifying disaster event. FSA also administers the QLA Program to provide financial assistance to eligible producers who experienced a crop quality loss due to a qualifying disaster event in calendar years 2018 or 2019. The qualifying disaster events are listed in the Background section below.

This rule amends the regulations for Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) to allow supplemental DMC payments to participating eligible dairy operations. DMC provides dairy producers with risk management coverage that pays producers when the difference between the price of milk and the cost of feed (the margin) falls below a certain level. Eligible dairy operations with less than 5 million pounds of established production history may enroll supplemental pounds based upon a formula using 2019 actual milk marketings. Supplemental DMC coverage is applicable to calendar years 2021, 2022, and 2023. Participating dairy operations with supplemental production may receive supplemental payments in addition to payments based on their established production history. In addition, the rule amends the alfalfa hay calculation used in determining the average feed cost and actual dairy production margin. To end prolonged months of milk indemnity payments, the rule amends the regulations for Dairy Indemnity Payment Program (DIPP) to indemnify affected farmers for depopulating and permanently removing cows after discovery of chemical residues affecting the commercial marketing of milk for the applicable farm and likely affecting the marketability of cows for a lengthy duration. The rule also implements a new Oriental Fruit Fly (OFF) Program as authorized in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019. In addition, the rule updates the existing Marketing Assistance Loans (MAL) and Loan Deficiency Payments (LDP) loan rates to be consistent with the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill); the loan rates were already changed administratively because the loan rate changes were self-enacting. This rule also amends the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) regulations to remove two discretionary requirements.