Federal Crop Insurance Corporation 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) proposes to amend the Common Crop Insurance Regulations, Prune Crop Insurance Provisions to remove the quality adjustment provisions for substandard prunes and to make other changes to clarify policy provisions. The intended effect of this action is to provide policy changes, to clarify existing policy provisions to better meet the needs of the producers, and to reduce vulnerability to program fraud, waste, and abuse. The changes will apply for the 2013 and succeeding crop years.

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) proposes to amend the Common Crop Insurance Regulations, Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions. The intended effect of this action is to provide policy changes, to clarify existing policy provisions to better meet the needs of insured producers, and to reduce vulnerability to program fraud, waste, and abuse. The proposed changes will be effective for the 2013 and succeeding crop years.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35) this notice announces the Risk Management Agency's intention to request an extension and revision to a currently approved information collection for Notice of Funds AvailabilityCommunity Outreach and Assistance Partnership Program.

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) proposes to replace the Group Risk Plan (GRP) provisions in CFR part 407, which includes the: GRP Basic Provisions, GRP Barley Crop Provisions, GRP Corn Crop Provisions, GRP Cotton Crop Provisions, GRP Forage Crop Provisions, GRP Peanut Crop Provisions, GRP Sorghum Crop Provisions, GRP Soybean Crop Provisions, and GRP Wheat Crop Provisions, with a new Area Risk Protection Insurance (ARPI) Basic Provisions and ARPI Crop Provisions for each of these crops except Barley and Peanuts. The new ARPI provisions will also replace the Group Risk Income Protection (GRIP) Basic Provisions, the GRIP Crop Provisions, and the GRIP-Harvest Revenue Option (GRIP-HRO). ARPI will offer producers a choice of Area Revenue Protection, Area Revenue Protection with the Harvest Price Exclusion, or Area Yield Protection, all within one Basic Provision and the applicable Crop Provisions. This will reduce the amount of information producers must read to determine the best risk management tool for their operation and will improve the provisions to better meet the needs of insured's. The changes will apply for the 2013 and succeeding crop years.

This document requests input to help us improve services and reduce duplication of effort, including collecting information from the public. Specifically, the Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services (FFAS) agencies including the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Risk Management Agency (RMA) have been working on a joint, coordinated initiative to have a common U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) framework for producer's to report information to participate in certain USDA programs. FSA and RMA have been working in coordination with the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) on the common reporting process. The USDA retrospective review request for information (RFI) published in the Federal Register on April 20, 2011, included the initiative to simplify and reduce the reporting burden on the public for submitting participation information for USDA programs, while simultaneously reducing our administrative and operating costs by sharing similar data across participating agencies. We believe the public, especially farmers, producers, ranchers, and the crop insurance industry who submit and use the information may have suggestions that may effectively reduce the burden of providing the information that USDA agencies require. Any resulting improvements to the processes will be within existing legislative authorities.

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), operating through the Risk Management Agency (RMA), announces its intent to award approximately $3,500,000 (subject to availability of funds) to fund the Risk Management Education and Outreach Partnerships Program. This Request for Applications (RFA) Announcement is for a combination of the programs previously known as the ``Commodity Partnerships for Small Agricultural Risk Management Education Sessions'' and the ``Community Outreach and Assistance Partnerships Program.'' The purpose of this combined cooperative partnership agreements program is to deliver crop insurance education and risk management training to U.S. agricultural producers to assist them in identifying and managing production, marketing, legal, financial and human risk. The program gives priority to: (1) Educating producers of crops currently not insured under Federal crop insurance, specialty crops, and underserved commodities, including livestock and forage; and (2) providing collaborative outreach and assistance programs for limited resource, socially disadvantaged and other traditionally underserved farmers and ranchers. The minimum award for any cooperative partnership agreement is $20,000. The maximum award for any cooperative partnership agreement is $100,000. The cooperative partnership agreements will be awarded on a competitive basis up to one year from the date of the award. Awardees must demonstrate non-financial benefits from a cooperative partnership agreement and must agree to the substantial involvement of RMA in the project. Funding availability for this program may be announced at approximately the same time as funding availability for similar but separate programs:CFDA No. 10.458 (Crop Insurance Education in Targeted States). Prospective applicants should carefully examine and compare the notices of each announcement. The collections of information in this Announcement have been approved by OMB under control numbers 0563-0066 and 0563-0067.

This document amends a number of regulations of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) principally to reflect the establishment of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the abolishment of the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, as mandated by section 251(f)(2) of the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 (7 U.S.C. 6971(f)(2)) (as added by section 7511 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (FCEA), Pub. L. 110-246). This rule also makes a number of miscellaneous amendments to the delegations of authority in 7 CFR part 2, as summarized below.

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) proposes to amend the General Administrative Regulations by adding a new subpart Y to provide a Good-Performance Refund (GPR) to producers who have demonstrated favorable crop insurance performance evidenced by a very limited number of claims experienced over a specified number of years participating Federal crop insurance programs. The GPR will recognize an individual producer's contributions to favorable program performance as authorized under section 508(d)(3) of the Federal Crop Insurance Act (Act). In addition, new or beginning producers demonstrating favorable crop insurance performance may also be recognized for initial participation in the program.