June 29, 2017
Paul Neiffer, an accounting expert with Clifton Larson Allen, joined us today to discuss the nuances regarding Farm Bill payments.
According to a recent Purdue University study, it is believed that farmers in the Corn Belt will fare better under the 2018 Farm Bill than farmers in the mountains and southern states. We asked Neiffer for his thoughts on the matter.
“Essentially,” he explains, “there was a very large corn ARC payment for the 2014-2015 crop, which is payed a year in arrears, whereas there was not really that large of a what payment in wheat for ARC or PLC for those two crop years, which would more affect Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the mountain states. That is the primary reason why there was a lot more in the corn belt than those was in the mountain states and southwestern states and so on.”
We then asked him how the forecast changes when the 2017 payment forecasts are incorporated.
“Likely, it is going to be almost completely reverse. There will still be some decent sized corn ARC payments in certain states, especially in those states where their yields were down – like Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma – hey are potentially looking at huge wheat PLC payments. It is likely payments are going to be paid off this year. Wheat may even be more than half of the total ARC/PLC payments paid out this year, so it is probably going to equalize out compared to what it was based on the first two years,” he stated.
Finally, we discussed anticipations for large variants taking place between counties in the same state.
“Definitely,” he asserted. “We have already seen in multiple states that, if you were based in one county, you were likely to get a very small payment, whereas your neighbor farmer, that might have been only a half a mile away from you, in that opposite county, was able to maybe get $70 payments. . . . I think they’re definitely going to have to address that, because the last thing you want to do is to have the neighbor down in the local coffee shop complaining about his low payment compared to everybody else.”
For more of Paul Neiffer’s thoughts visit FarmCPAToday.com.