News

Ohio farmers receive FSA payments

Last week, almost 100,000 Ohio farmers started receiving Farm Service Agency (FSA) safety-net payments. Ohio FSA Executive Director Steven Maurer says farmers are getting more payments this year than in 2015.

“It’s substantial…just for Ohio well over $380 million dollars. Not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination and it’s doing what the farm bill was intended to do and that is try to make up part of the difference when markets drop.” says Maurer.

Maurer tells Brownfield payments by county this year were more uniform statewide.

“Last year there were instances where neighboring counties where there were payments made in one and nothing in the other. And that raised an awful lot of eyebrows. It’s much more even statewide this year than last year.

About 86,000 Ohio farmers participated in the Agriculture Risk Coverage County (ARC-County) program this year and 9,000 participated in the Price Loss (PLC) coverage program.