Making a SURE Decision Now for Potential Disaster Assistance Later

The new farm bill included some significant changes in the farm income safety net. As a result, crop producers will need to make a number of decisions about new farm program participation, some in a very short period of time. The first program decision for crop producers is the simple question of signing up for the 2008 commodity programs. These crop support programs did not change for 2008, except for some legislative language that will eliminate farms with less than ten base acres from the farm program, unless those farms were limited resource or socially-disadvantaged farms. The deadline for sign-up for the 2008 crop year programs is September 30. The big change in commodity programs will come with the 2009 crop year and the decision to keep the existing price-based counter-cyclical payment or select a revenue-based average crop revenue election (ACRE) payment. That decision will be made at sign-up for the 2009 program, which could begin in late fall or early winter