 One of the first things I'd like to do is thank all our sponsors that helped us put together and provide input and money for today's event. I'm going to just read through the list. South Dakota Wheat Commission, Farm Credit Services of America, Wheat Growers, Mustang Seed, Monsanto, Prairie State Seeds, Next Level Ag, LLC, Millboard Seeds, La Crosse Seeds, Dakota Best Seed, Agronomy Plus, Farmers Eliacs, Mitchell, First Dakota National Bank, C&D Operations and Davis and County Amplement, Scott Supply, Crop Tech, Ducks Unlimited, Aurora County Conservation District, Davis and County Conservation District, Hanson County Conservation District, South Dakota Noctil Association, SDSU Extension, USDA and NRCS and Pioneer Hybrids of Dupont. So let's give them all a welcome round of applause. I'm going to remind you for Josh that those of you who took these and need those by the end of the day, I took your money but we need the thing to go with them. Like Dan said, I'm Kay Schmidt. For those of you who don't know me, I grew up just north of here or just east of here where South Whitlock Resort is. My sister Pat runs that now on our family ranch. My mom and dad, mom was Docknold Secretary for years in town at the vet and my dad was a spray pilot. And I married into the Schmidt family in Gettysburg. They ran the standard station there by the Catholic Church for years and my husband delivered bulk fuel and now he delivers, helps deliver feed. He runs the driveway at the CHS, what used to be CC Bar, feed in town. So been here a long time and I know some of you and don't know some of you. So when Danny asked me to talk, he said specifically about nap and covers because we were dealing with some Australian peas and some full season cover crops. But I also said we do have some livestock programs available through the office that not everybody's aware of too. So I'm going to hit the highlights. I've got handouts that cover everything in detail and I did give you handouts in case technology is always spotty at best. So I'm going to talk, I'm not going to read you these slides but I'll talk fast. So first up is nap which is our non-insurance crop disaster. It works pretty much just like federal crop insurance does. Basically you get what you pay for. Cat coverage at 50% of the approved yield and 55% of the price is $250 per crop. For $250 you can cover all your pasture. Not very much but if you pay it once, it's probably going to cover your $250 premium for the next 10 years. Currently we have 17 crops with 39 different types or intended uses. We are in the process of adding the cover crops with vegetables for this year. We added Australian peas last year. All it takes is if there is something that your crop insurance doesn't feel comfortable carrying, come talk to us. We'll see what we can get added in. So biop is available if it's not for grazing and that works exactly like crop insurance as well. 100% of the price and you can buy up to 50-65% of the yield. We don't have anyone yet that's used the biop feature because most of our policies are currently just grass but we're willing to work with you on that. If you are a beginning farmer, limited resource producer or a socially disadvantaged person the first $250 is waived all together and your biop is 50% cost. There is a tool that lets you self-certify whether or not you're a limited resource and rancher. Beginning farmers usually anyone who has farmed less than 10 years. You do have to certify that every year. Gender or race, socially disadvantaged obviously. Once you're a woman you're always a woman. You feel that out once. Well I shouldn't say that. Any more? Anything can happen. The causes of loss on NAP, pretty much anything you can think of. Most of ours have been paid on drought. We did pay, you can insure your sorghum or your millet hay. And we had paid some due to untimely rains during the planting season for that. We have paid PP as well. Insect or disease can't be on its own but if heat causes the anthrax or the wet weather the heat causes something else then it is an unaffected fat. In 2016 Potter County paid $13,446 on forage losses under our NAP policies. Right now we're waiting, the state committee has to concur on our grazing losses and we do have some of those. If you have a loss on your forage then we just contact you and you get the gesture out of that just like crop insurance. Just like crop insurance. If you're going to hay it and your APH is two ton an acre, you come in and say I bailed everything I had. I got three quarters of a ton. If you are not going to hay anything then yes we do need to adjust it. And we do have loss adjusters and actually they're usually the same people. Dwight Houston, he adjusts crop insurance. He does now. So they're located throughout the state. Eligible producers, basically anybody that has a share or a risk in the crop and here's the important part, you have a 578 on file. You have to report your grasses to us. That's kind of new for some of my just ranchers. And we report that in the fall. November 15th was the deadline but we can take a late file anytime you come in. So let's see. The coverage period basically when you start, when you 30 days after you pay your nap fee till the end, other than grazing, of course that's our normal grazing season in Potter County, May 1st through October 31st. The basic things to remember to stay eligible for nap. We use your yields just like crop insurance. You need to be the next one. There you go. So if you don't report your production to us, you get a zero for that year. A zero yield takes a long time and a 10-year APH to get rid of. So if you're not going to hay it, you're not going to harvest it, let us know, we'll appraise it. If you file a loss in Potter County, or the county happens to be a disaster yield or year, and declared disaster, we are authorized to use 65% of tea. Right now most of our hay is at 1.97 ton per acre for a tea yield. So you won't have to take a complete zero even if it's a disaster year and you have a low yield, but not enough for a loss. So that helps too. But do report your production to us, and it is required. When you file a notice of loss, it's when you first notice it. Obviously for PP it would be the 15 days after the final plant date. For grazing, little hit and miss. You know, does it look like, well, in June of this year, our grass kind of looked like it wasn't going to make it. We had a lot of people file. And then it was like, well, we got that rain. Well, I think I'm going to be okay. So it's better to file the loss and not need it than not to have it. And if you file a loss, your loss adjuster, you have no cost to you whatsoever. So that helps too. How we pay a grazing loss, if you have a forage policy, we use your exact production. You have a 25% loss on your hay. You're going to get a 25% loss on your pasture. You have a 68% loss. You'll get the same. If you don't hay anything or you don't have a forage policy, if we can find a couple farms around you that have hay policies, we're allowed to use those as well. If not, then it gets a little tricky. I go to NRCS. Juanita was out, where's she at? Was out earlier this spring and did a couple assessments for us. And Kelly, I know you've done them in the past for us as well. And we can, but one of them has to be an NRCS grazing specialist. That's how our state committee set it up. Yep, yep. Actually, we've never had them be that far off before. I mean, our loss adjuster was pretty close to what Juanita and Isaac came up with too. And honestly, the hay production kind of supported that. I've never had them where they're way off, at least in Potter County. No, right. Yep. And I know Fall County, NRCS has grazing cages set up. And Eric helped me out. They've been there for what, 10, 15 years? Yep. Yep. And Eric, when he was our acting DC, was kind of, when we get a DC in Potter County, we're going to hopefully try to get some of those set up too. So then you'll have a good county-wide... Absolutely. I've always been here, because I've been in here, especially because you can do it yourself. And you have your own records. You know what your production on your passion is are. You're in and you're out. So we do have a backyard. We have something to compare it to. Because other than that, we get these averages. And, you know, a lot of times the rain is sporadic within the county. You've got the biggest thing that allows drastic growth is how it managed to do it before. Before it was even the drought. So it manages a huge impact on the amount of vegetation going in there and then after the drought. And so there's a lot of things. So if you had a cage out there, you got solid food. This is the way I manage my ground. It's like this. The production I'm getting out of here makes things a lot better. It does. It really does. And like Kelly said, especially in Potter County, you know what we get at the river is nowhere near what we get at Tolstoy. And sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes the river will get way more. Also, river breaks. You guys run probably 12 to 14 acres on an AUM eastern part of the county. I've seen them down to four. So it does make a huge difference. But we're working on it. And like I said, we hope to get the next couple of pages are just the crops that we actually carry currently carry right now in Potter County. The state office did send out a memo on RMA has a whole farm revenue protection that's going to be piloted in South Dakota this year. And you can use NAP and that. But when it came down to if there was a payment, you would have to choose between one or the other. But you can carry both policies because it's a pilot right now. So that's something new for 17. I did in your handout. This is if you have any questions about NAP or what you think NAP will cost you. Come see your FSA office. We can run spreadsheets like this on any kind of crop you want. This I just used 80 acres of teff. Basically, in addition to the $250, I can get cat for 313 an acre. I can buy up the max for 988. Now, since I'm a woman, I would cost me half of that. But for the most part. And this is supposed to be available to the public. But Danny and I, we could not get that to work yet. It will work on the Internet Explorer. Okay. It won't work on Chrome. Chrome. Okay. And there is a website in here on how to get it. But if you have trouble, come into the FSA office. Any of us can run it. It takes two seconds. We ran three scenarios in five minutes probably, Dan. I mean, it doesn't take long. Yeah. So, like I said, come see us. We're good. We'll be fine. Teresa likes NAP. Just ask her. Oh. All right. Next one. Don't knock the weather. You didn't have weather. You couldn't start a conversation. That's pretty much NAP in a nutshell. And it was fast and furious. Any questions on? Like I said, it works a lot like crop insurance. You know, okay, one thing on her pastures, and he mentioned a guy should have like a 16 foot square where you don't want to graze it. Oh, it only has to be four foot square. I think they decided. But should a guy do a biomass to that? Or how do you? They just do. The pictures or what do you do? Clippings. As far as I know, they just use the clippings. Well, you can weigh them. We can work with you. If anybody's interested in doing that, we'd be more than happy to come out. And it takes you longer to drive to that spot. There's a little, all we're doing is just to pull by on. Just let me try and weigh it. We've done what the key is every year in the fall. You've got to move. You need to really move it. Yeah. And mow off the spot in the bounds of the ground. So you have to turn here to grow. Yep. So next year, it's just about, say, a lot of older people just like to have a little bit of that. Yep. And they did say, I know I talk to different people from NRCS, and it kind of depends. Some people just use the stockade panels. But if you've got, they said rabbits will really play. They like to get in that nice green grass that nobody grazes. So some of them will use the hog panels, where it's smaller on the bottom. And I did talk to the new FFA, the ag teacher. And he said, you know, if we had some specs, he would not be opposed to just having the kids build some if anybody wanted to use them. By the supplies, he'll look them up. So, yeah. That could be a good to know, just to know what you're producing. And it is. I mean, just for the grazing benefits. I mean, that's what you're taking off. Yep. And the county's around us. NRCS does it quite a bit. We just haven't had it. So we'll get it started. And hopefully we'll get there. He's got to make some foresighted things. And then he puts his rain gauge on it. Oh, okay. He has a rain gauge. And he said if you put in 18 cc's of automatic transmission fluid. Now, I don't know why it has to be automatic transmission fluid. And then you leave it out there all year. And the water, of course, goes through the oil flow. It's on top. So you can make it once a year and you know what you got all year because it doesn't operate. That's a good number. And I know Monti puts his on wheels, lawnmower wheels. He just wheels it around the next place. So I think you'd have to stake them down to the cattle and rub them. But I don't know. That's why we have the NRCS offices. Next up would be, this is a pasture program we have as well. Livestock Forage Disaster Program. We paid this in Potter County in 2012 and 13. It has to be extremely dry before this will kick in. You can have NAP and this. But again, you'll have to choose between the payments. And let me tell you there's not a big choice. You will take the LFP payments in a heartbeat. But like I said, it takes you to be a qualifying drought. And I've listed on the next page is the five stages. D0 and D1 do not count. And as dry as it was this year, we were never over a D1 in Potter County. The nice thing about this program is if one part of the county is it, the entire county gets the program. It does not have to be the whole county for this. So like I said, we paid it in 12 and 13 and we haven't paid it since. So eligible livestock, pretty much everything you can have. You can't count the deer though unless they're tame and it's part of your commercial product. As far as recreational livestock, that would be up to each individual committee. I can tell you right now my Potter County committee feels that if you've got horses, you're using them because why else would you be feeding them? So we've paid on, I know, they're hay burners. I've never rolled one down a hill though. But that is an individual county committee call as far as what would be recreational. You know, I was going to give Cory a bad time because I know Cory and Casey Rope, also know they use their horses for everything else too. So there again, you can't use the wild free roaming deer to count, but we've paid on pretty much everything else. You do have to own or lease them 60 days before the drought period starts. If you run them on an animal unit basis, there is a form because you wouldn't be, you wouldn't have certified that grass to us at the office, but there is a form that the person who does have the grass would sign and say yes. They run these on an animal unit basis. They're responsible for fences watering, however the agreement is, and then that will help you out. Again, file the grazing report. These are the payments for what 16 would have been if they paid. 17 has not been, next page. Anyway, 17 haven't been released. The thing to remember about this program is if you had to sell down because of the drought, we will pay you for two more years on the animals that you would have kept had you have the grass, which is a nice project because management is a huge deal. I didn't keep 700 head. I could only feed 500. Well, that's a good thing. So we're not going to penalize you for being a good manager. So that helps too. That one. Having grown up with a dad who didn't believe in, even come-alongs, I liked this one. I always thought that's why my dad had children to open gates and throw hay bales. No, we didn't have to pick rocks. We had cows. They didn't care. LIP, livestock indemnity program. This one a lot of people don't seem to know about, but it's a very good program. It pays on excess of normal mortality rates for weather-related livestock deaths. And you talk about rain on Christmas Eve. Let me tell you, there were weather-related livestock deaths in a hurry. We have some still in January. That snow come on top of the ice. Now they fall down. They break a leg. They can't get up. That's weather-related. South Dakota, you know, it's not going to be, although in 16, I had one of my county committee persons tell me, well, they're worth more dead than they are when I sell them. But they're, on average, it's a rolling Olympic value price that they use on it, current market value. Excess of mortality is, in 2016, we paid out $7,553 under this program, and we're just starting $16. And we do have some applications in on that. Normal mortality is 5% for your calves and one and a half for cows and bulls. And a lot of what most of our people do that use this program is, normally, you are doing financial statements or renewals beginning of the year. You've got a balance sheet, you've got your taxes, your depreciation schedules. I just need a beginning inventory. Then if something dies, call me, text me, e-mail me. We just keep it running tally. If it happens to be weather-related, we'll say we called on the phone call. You know, I must have been that blizzard. I went out on the 8th of January, so you don't have to come into the office to start the process. Just to remember to just... Like I said, a lot of my farmers, they just text. Text the office. It comes right in. We've got a running record, a written proof. Works great. E-mail me. I've got cards over there with our e-mail address. To be eligible, again, you had to have owned them on the day they died. And they can... We can pay up to 60 days after the weather event. So say you're calving, and it's wet, and it's crappy like it was two years ago, and those black calves never got dry. The sun never came out. They stayed wet. They stayed muddy. You treated them for pneumonia. You gave them six shots. You tried to dry them off. 30 days later, they're dead. It's still a weather-related death because we know what it's like out there. So, I mean, they don't have to die in the middle of a blizzard to be eligible. Can you talk to the baby again? Yeah, we paid... Yeah, two years ago when we had all that rain and snow, we just lost a lot of them. So, like I said, we can pay up to that. Eligible loss condition, there's eligibility. That's the same thing. Next one, the loss conditions. Basically, it's wind. It's cold. It's hot. It's blizzard. It's winter storm. Fire. The disease... Now, we had paid... Several years ago, we had an anthrax outbreak, and we did pay some of those, and we paid a couple on the cyanobacteria where they got that algae and they got sick. So, we did pay a couple on those when it got so hot and dry there for a while. Depends. The Atlas storm where the cows actually drowned by standing on dry land, they did pay that because it was weather-related. Now, you're managing, and you left a bunch of hay bales out there and you didn't go check on them for a week, did the calves suffocate in the hay bale? That's going to be a little questionable. Wind shield, we have charts that they trigger. A calf, if it's under 400 pounds, if it's a 10-degree wind shield, negative 10, that's extreme cold for a calf. It has to be negative 30 for a cow. So, there's variables there on how that goes, and we use several different websites. One of them is SDSU. They have a monitoring site in Gettysburg for a weather station. It records the wind and the highs and the lows, and we use that. I think Tolstoy has a National Weather Service up that direction, too, and we can kind of pick and choose where we need. As far as extreme heat, now, we've never paid any extreme heat. I know some did, but we're feedlotting that summer. It got so hot. Basically, the temperature humidity index has to be 84 or higher for at least an hour. Basically, that's 90 degrees with 65% humidity, so not unheard of in South Dakota. Nope, you would come in and let us know. A lot of our guys that use it just start the year with their beginning inventory because they know it runs a whole calendar year. They'll bring in their balance sheets, and I don't need to know the dollar amount. I just need number of head. And then, if they do have a loss, like I said, a telephone call is all it takes to start the application. Nope. It's not like MAP. There's no application fee at all. And then there's the chart for the normal mortality. A little hard to read, but like I said, calves, 5%. If you get a little older, 400 pounds to 799 pounds. It's 2%. That'll one and a half. Lambs, 10.7%. And for use, it's 4%. And having raised sheep, those 4% will be the ones that look completely healthy, standing next to the ones that can't walk across the yard. Fails will be the ones that drop dead. Applying for lip, here you go. Just submit a notice of loss, call us, text, email. Any of them count does not have to be an office visit. Like I said, a good habit to get into report because once you report them all, we already have your normal mortality accounted for. Now you can wait until the first weather event and bring us your books and we'll back it up from there. But like I said, it's just as easy to start in January and work your way through. If you run livestock in several counties, you can start where you do your records, but the payment will actually come out of where the loss occurred. And we find that here where some of our producers run Dewey County land. They've got some grazing over there. That might be drier. That might be a lightning strike over there. We'll start the paperwork for you, but the payment will actually come out of the Dewey County. Especially if you're running shares. Same I heard down in Corson County. I run those on two-thirds share. But my land I have got here, I run my whole herd. I don't have to count the beginning inventory of all of my livestock. Those share cattle down there are beginning inventory all on their own. They don't get mixed in with mine. They don't run the same grass as mine. So there's a little bit different there. And we don't have a whole lot of that, but there's some that happens. And like I said, you don't have to visit that particular office, but the payments will come from that office. Documentation. That's a big thing and what I can tell you is that each committee, each county committee may have different ideas as far as what they want for acceptable documentation. So this is just a very general overview. Like I said, most of the time, our guys will bring in a financial statement, tax returns. We've seen preg testing, vet records, bangs testing, you know, receipts from the vet. Anything that will work. During calving season, especially calving losses. You know, you've got your books, you use them. We don't judge on what's written in those books. Or how bad they look. Now I did, my committee did have, we actually rejected one where someone turned in a typed piece of paper and said, this is what I lost during the week of that blizzard. And they said, we want your calving book. And he said, this is it. And they rejected it. So it's like, no, I want the real thing. Anybody can type something on a piece of paper. So, but like I said, documentation. There's a lot of different things you can use. And I love this one. This is, this is typical government speaking. Furnishing the application is voluntary. However, I will not pay you unless you give me the information. So, I had a life about that. I like this one too. The last thing I have is the, what we call ELAP, emergency assistance for livestock. Again, we don't use this a lot, but we have. We currently submitted $20,382 worth of loss payments for that hailstorm that happened just up the river here this summer. You know, it was just short. It wasn't very long. But the nice thing about this one is, it covers by field level. So if your summer pasture, which is what happened up there, gets totaled out, I don't count your winter pasture that you're keeping over here for later against you. That was 100% loss on your summer pasture. It's going to get paid at 100%. Now, there is a $20 million national cap each year, so it all goes into one pot. It doesn't get paid. I won't make payments until April of the following year. But it's nice to have. We also used it the year they had that lebden fire. Went through, took a bunch of pastures out, took a bunch of haystacks out. We paid a little bit on that. It basically covers what none of the other programs will cover. They threw it into here. Fire. We've got transporting water. You do have to be a D3 on the drought monitor before that will kick in. So it's a little bit harder to qualify for, but it's basically the same thing. You're grazing during the, you own and release some 60 calendar days, May 1st to October 31st. The weird thing about this program is it does not run calendar year. It recovers, because it's nationally funded at a level cap, I have to wait. It goes October 1 through September 30th. But our grazing season doesn't end until October 31st. So I may have two applications for the same pasture, one through September 30th and one for the month of October. And yes, it would be a lot easier if our programs run the same, but we don't have farmers that are writing these programs. Payment rates are based on what a corn would cost. And I don't know, it says in part on that. I don't know where they get $1.79 on energy efficiency for one day, but that's how it is. And again, the payment of the hauling water, you have to be D3. Applying the same thing, just call us, text us, email us. We'll get the process started. It's a little hard to read on my handout here, and I do have cards over there, but my email address is on the next slide. Texting, if you have any questions, I didn't cover. It does say Mary Schmidt, and my real name is Mary Kay. But when I was two, my mother said I came out and said I didn't like that name, so I wasn't going to answer to it anymore. So for those of you who deal with me in the office and you find me a little stubborn, I have filled in a few more websites, just in case I've done some Heynet, there's some NRCS Equip, Emergency Hanging and Grazing. Like I said, I have everything up here as well. The last, some of the CRP practices cannot be managed Hanging and Grazing. And we used to have to bail and destroy them, which was the dumbest thing I had ever heard of in my entire life, and, Travis, and you guys can say the same thing. But there is a donation program. If you would like to be on the list for donated Hey through the state program, now they will prioritize if a certain county is in a drought or a disaster declaration, it will go there first, but they just keep a list all year long of people who are willing to go and get the Hey, so it doesn't have to be destroyed. The other thing I thought was nice on the very last slide, Josh, this Netscape, this is a picture of the land that Mr. Item rents from me just right up here. This is 160 acres of spring wheat in 2016. This is a grass draw that runs through there. This happens to be a little triangle of wheat that they planted next to it, but you can go in on any place in South Dakota. It doesn't matter if it's your farm or not. This will have historical what's planted, what it looks like, the rotations. It's a nice little program to have, especially when crop leases turn over more often than they used to nowadays. Privacy Act, you can't always get information if you have the legal. You'd at least have an idea of what was maybe planted there in previous years. So I thought that was kind of fun. Also, the ARC program, for those of you who have crops, please stop into the office, your local office, and sign up before you get into the field.