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Understanding safety net options
As more details come out about the new safety net programs available to farmers in the Farm Bill, they are trying to figure out what programs work best for their operations.
Roman Keeney, associate professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University says they are working to educate farmers about options available. “Farms all differ and we want them to learn and to make the best choice for themselves,” he says. “We think there’s some real benefits and management opportunities in this Farm Bill and that’s the way we want people to think about it – and that’s the message we want to put forward.”
Keeney tells Brownfield there is a lot of information for farmers to sort through. “We’ve had a relatively easy set of programs to deal with,” he says. “We received direct payment checks for years and farmers spent 20 years learning to deal with those. Now everything is going to be counter-cyclical. When the markets go down – payments will go up.”
Which, he says, makes the new safety net programs work more like insurance programs for farmers.
USDA with assistance from the University of Illinois is releasing an online program later this year that will offer a suite of decision aids allowing farmers use their own information to make the best safety net decision for their farms.
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