Remember the Pandemic Cover Crop Program or PCCP? You should–we wrote a blog about it back in June. At that time USDA had just announced this new program for farmers who planted fall cover crops and that were in the process of ensuring their spring planted program (cash crops). This program provided a $5 per acre break on crop insurance for those winter covers producers planted following their 2021 cash crop.
In that blog we also mentioned that at that time this program only applied to spring crops and winter covers, but that if you grew winter wheat, rye or other fall planted crops and then followed these cash crops with summer covers, you needed to report those cover crop acres to the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) as soon as they were in the ground because there was a chance that this effort might be expanded in the future to cover fall planted cash crops.
Guess what? It was.
Last month the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) announced that the PCCP will be extended to cover those cover crop acres planted last summer following fall planted crops like winter wheat. The kicker is that producers HAVE TO GET THEIR COVER CROP ACRES REPORTED TO FSA BY MARCH 15 by filing the Report of Acreage form (FSA-578) with your local office if they want to qualify.
See why we said you needed to get those acres reported?
The window on this program is closing soon. You need to contact your local USDA service center to make an appointment as soon as possible. You can find a list of local and state FSA offices here: http://www.farmers.gov/service-locator. You also need to contact your crop insurance agent for more information.
Qualifying cover crops include all that are reportable to the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), including cereals and other grasses, legumes, brassicas and other non-legume broadleaves, and mixtures of two or more cover crop species planted at the same time. A full list of qualifying cover crops is available in FSA Handbook 2-CP. PCCP does not change acreage reporting dates, reporting requirements, or any other terms of the crop insurance policy.
It’s also important to remember that while PCCP is available for most insurance policies, there are a few exceptions.
PCCP is not available for:
- Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP)
- Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO)
- Hurricane Insurance Protection – Wind Index (HIP-WI)
- Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO)
- Stacked Income Protection (STAX) (if an underlying policy)
- Margin Protection (MP) (if an underling policy)
As part of filing the Report of Acreage, you will need to provide:
- cover crop type or variety;
- number of acres of the cover crop;
- map with approximate boundaries for the cover crop;
- planting dates;
- planting pattern, when applicable;
- producer shares; and
- irrigation practices.
Remember, the filing date for this program is March 15!
Southern Plains Perspective 