 My name is Ron Haugen. I'm a farm management specialist with the NDSU extension in the agribusiness and applied economics department. And we have a webinar here today jointly with the extension service and the North Dakota Farm Service Agency. And I want to make sure, go through a few introductions and a few housekeeping details before we get started here. I want to introduce the people that will be speaking today, Laura Heinrich, the North Dakota FSA program director. She's going to cover ARC and PLC. She's going to talk about the election and the enrollment. And after that, I will be talking about the ARC PLC calculator that NDSU has developed and show you around that process. After that, Kristin Knudsen from the Farm Service Agency will talk about the NAP program and go and also some miscellaneous programs and deadline updates. Okay, if we are going to have time for questions from the audience, and we will open it up for questions after each presentation. And if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A box, and we will be monitoring those questions. But we want to try to keep on time. We hope we can get to all the questions. And if there is, so make sure and take advantage of that if you so desire. So with that, I will turn it over to Laura and she will start out the webinar. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. I know on my screen it shows that I'm Kristin Knudsen, but I am Laura Heinrich, and I am the program director for the Farm at the Farm Service Agency. And my department handles the ARC PLC program and the NAP program that will be covered today. Like Ron stated, the first program we're going to cover is ARC PLC and we're going to go over election and enrollment. So the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage program, that's the last time I'm going to say that whole wordful, we're going to call it ARC PLC from now on. But the ARC PLC program provides a safety net to farmers and ranchers when there is a substantial drop in revenue or price for covered commodities. And the reason we're holding this webinar today is because we have an upcoming deadline of March 15th for producers to change their program election and also to enroll in the program. So the program handle is actually encompasses three different programs within it. The first program is the Price Loss Coverage or PLC program, which provides price loss coverage for selected covered commodities on the farm. The second program is ARC County or Agricultural Risk Coverage County. This program provides revenue loss coverage at the county level for selected covered commodities on a farm. ARC County is not dependent on planting a covered commodity. It's based on the number of base acres you have of that commodity on the farm. The third program is ARC Individual. ARC Individual provides revenue loss coverage at a farm level for all acreage devoted to cover commodities across all of the producers are individual farms enrolled. One or more covered commodities must be planted on the farm in the current year for an ARC IC payment rate to be calculated for the farm and producer. So that's an overview of the three programs. Those three programs cover specific cover commodities and they're listed on the screen here. North Dakota has base acres of all of the covered commodities listed, except for rice, peanuts and cotton and sesame. So we do handle almost all of the covered commodities that are covered under the program in North Dakota. We wanted to remind you that if you had any acreage that was enrolled in the CRP program or the Conservation Reserve program, if you had a contract that expired on September 30th of 2021, you may have base acres that are eligible to be enrolled into the ARC PLC program. So if we want you to contact your local county office, if you did have a contract that expired to make sure that we get that acreage put back on your farm and that you are able to make a program election and enroll that acreage into the ARC PLC program. So how do producers make a PLC ARC County or ARC IC election? Under the 2018 Farm Bill, it does allow producers on the farm the opportunity to elect PLC, ARC County or ARC IC, or ARC individual. All producers on the farm must make a unanimous decision to change the election. Owners do not make the election decision unless they are considered a producer receiving a share of a crop on the farm. So it is the actual producer on the farm that makes the election not the owner. The only time the owner would be involved is if they receive a share of the crop. The elections that were made in 2019 were effective for both the 2019 and 2020 program years. But each year 2021 through 2023 producers do have the opportunity to change the election on the farm. And the deadline to change that program election is March 15th of the applicable program year. So elections of PLC and ARC County are made on a cover commodity by cover commodity basis on the farm. So within that farm, if you had wheat and soybeans as base crops on a particular farm, you could put wheat into PLC and soybeans into ARC County. If you decided to elect ARC individual or ARC IC, all cover commodity base acres on that farm have to elect ARC IC. We wanted to remind producers that any crop on a farm that you elect to participate in agricultural risk coverage, so our County or ARC IC program, that acreage is not eligible for supplemental coverage option under federal crop insurance. So when you're making this program election, we want to make sure that you're just making having a discussion with your crop insurance agent to assure that you're in compliance with a supplemental coverage option if you choose to go that route with federal crop insurance. Now I'm going to cover just some details of the three different programs. Under the price less coverage program or PLC payments are earned for a cover commodity when the effective price is less than the effective reference price for the cover commodity for the crop year. Payments are made on 85% of the farm's base acres as a cover commodity, and payments are not dependent on planting of the applicable base crop on the farm. This slide just lists what the reference prices are, but if you notice I didn't use the I threw an extra word in there of effective reference price so this is our base reference price but the 2018 Farm Bill incorporated what we call an effective reference price, which means that that reference price can be adjusted yearly, and it's based on the lesser of 115% of the reference price for the cover commodity, or the amount equal to the greater of the reference price for the commodity or 85% of the average of the marketing year average price of the cover commodity in the most five recent crop years. So that seems really complicated, and but we do post what that effective reference price is on our national or PLC website, and you can find that by looking at a document called the projected. This is the 2022 price or PLC coverage payment rates. So in column E it lists what that effective reference price is for each commodity, and then it will give you what the projected price is also on under column H. And then column I shows you what the projected PLC payment rate would be and as you can see right now for 2022. It's showing that there would not be a payment rate for any crop except for peanuts. Also, as we go through like Ron said he's going to go through his calculator and it does this calculation for you as part of his, his arc County and PLC calculation. The next program will go over in detail is a cultural risk coverage County or our County payments are earned when the actual County crop revenue of a cover commodity is less than the county guarantee for that cover commodity. The payment rates are capped at 10% of the benchmark revenue payments are made on 85% of the farm's base acres of the cover commodity. And then under our County payments are not dependent on planting of an applicable base crop on the farm. It's based on the historic base acres and yields are based on County data not individual farm data. So we said the payments are calculated when the actual revenue is below the our County guarantee. The our County guarantee is calculated at 8086% of the our County benchmark revenue. Our County benchmark revenue is calculated by taking the five year Olympic average of the marketing year average prices multiplied by the five year Olympic average of the County yield. So when we're looking at the marketing year average price, we're taking each year we're taking the higher of the marketing year average price or the or the effective reference price. And then when we calculate the Olympic average County yield, we take the higher of the actual County yield for that year, or 80% of the County to you. And an Olympic average just means we're dropping the high and low within that five year span for each the marketing year average price and the, and the, the yield. The 2018 Farm Bill implemented a leg year when calculating the the benchmark and so the example would be for 2022 benchmark yields. We use 2016 through 2020 actual County yields and marketing year average prices. So we skip 2021 and we use 16. So now we've calculated our guarantee. We need to look at how we calculate our County actual revenue. And that's calculated by taking the actual County yield. Multiplied by the higher of the marketing year average price for that program year or the national loan rate. So now that we have both of our calculations we know what our guarantee is and what our actual, our payment is calculated by subtracting the guarantee from the actual revenue. If the actual revenue is higher than the guarantee, then there would be a zero payment for that specific crop. And if it's higher than that, if the, the guarantee is higher than the actual revenue that is capped at 10% of the art County benchmark revenue. We talked about we use the art County yields to establish the guarantee and the actual yield. So I just wanted to give you some information on how they're actually established. So the first thing that our State Committee looks at when establishing a yield for the cover commodity for each county in the state is we look at RMA yield data that's available. If there's not an RMA yield for that particular commodity in County, then we would look at NAS data. And if there's no RMA or NAS data, then we look at the best available information for the State Committee to set a yield for that crop and County combination. So under the 2018 Farm Bill, there is a change where we make a calculation based on the physical location of the tracks that make up that farm. Under the 2014 Farm Bill we based it on where that farm is administrated. Under the 2018 Farm Bill, we look at where the tracks on that farm are physically located and if there's more than one County. That the tracks are located in, we would do a weighted average of those to determine what the benchmark revenue is and what the actual revenue is for that particular farm. Also with the 2018 Farm Bill, it required the Secretary to calculate a separate actual crop revenue and guarantee for irrigated and non-irrigated cover commodities to the maximum extent practical. So we only had about two or three counties under the 2014 Farm Bill that had irrigated and non-irrigated revenues calculated. But under the 2018 Farm Bill we have about 50. And this slide just lists the counties that would have an irrigated and non-irrigated our County yield established for it and in turn and irrigated and non-irrigated our County guarantee and actual yield. So the last program I'd like to give you more in-depth information on is the agricultural risk coverage individual or ARC individual. Payments are earned when the actual individual crop revenue of all cover commodities planted on the ARC IC farm is less than the ARC IC guarantee for those cover commodities. Again with ARC IC you are required to plant a cover commodity. And so we use the actual cover commodities that are planted on the farm for that year to establish what the guarantee and actual yields are or actual revenues are. And ARC IC payment does have a cap and it's capped at 10% of the individual weighted benchmark revenue of all cover commodities planted on that farm for that year. Those benchmark and actual yields are based on the producer certified yields for farms enrolled in ARC IC and producers are required to report that information when they enroll into the ARC IC program. ARC IC enrolled farms can use approved prevent plant acres when 100% of the intended planted acres of the cover commodity are approved for prevent plant by FSA on the farm. So this year if we have extremely wet conditions and an entire farm is 100% prevent plant for the cover commodities that are planted, then that would be considered having cover commodities planted on that farm. And then your revenue would be zero because it was prevented from being planted. ARC individual benchmark revenues is a five year Olympic average revenue. Marketing year average price is taken times the individuals yield for each year and calculated for each planted cover commodity on the ARC IC farm in that current year. And then it's weighed and summed across all cover commodities on the farm. Pretty complicated calculation and again that's where Ron stepped in and helped us a lot and producers in North Dakota by creating a spreadsheet that that will analyze and calculate that for us. So once we have those benchmark revenues calculated, then we take 86% of that benchmark revenue to establish the guarantee for the ARC individual farm. Again, we do use that leg year like we do in our county. So for the 2022 benchmark, we would be looking at the producers 2016 through 2020 actually yields to establish that benchmark. So once you've decided which program you want to enroll in or elect and enroll in payments are then issued October 1 of the year following the program year. And for 2022 will issue those payments on October 1 of 2023. And the reason we have that year leg is because we talked about a marketing year average prices used in those calculations for each program. And those marketing year average prices are a 12 month marketing year averages so they go into the next calendar year so we don't issue those payments until October 1 of the following year. Those payments can be reduced if in certain situations if fruit and vegetables are planted on the farm. ARC PLC producers are subject to an acre for acre payment reduction when fruit and vegetables are planted on on our PLC payment acres. And again, it's only if those fruit and vegetables go into payment acres. And to calculate how many free acres you would have on a farm you take 15% of the base acres on the farm. If that farm is enrolled in our county or PLC to determine how many free acres you can plant fruit and vegetables on without a payment reduction. And if the farms enrolled into ARC IC you take 35% of the base acres on the farm to determine how many free acres you'd have to print plant fruit and vegetables before there's a payment reduction. Another provision we have is a grass idle fallow provision. So any farm where all cropland was planted to a grass or pasture, including cropland that was idle or fallow from January 1 2009 through December 31 2017 will not receive our PLC payments for crop years 2019 through 2023. They'll be able to maintain all of their base acres and PLC yields, but they cannot make program elections and they're not eligible for payment. Another restriction on payments that we have is if the farm has 10 base acres or less on the farm. Those farms would not be eligible for a payment, unless they met the exception of the sum of the base acres on the farm when combined with base acres of all other farms for the producer is more than 10 base acres. Or that producer would meet the definition of socially disadvantaged limited resource or beginning or veteran farmer or rancher. Additional restrictions on our PLC payment eligibility would be the producers need to meet actively engaged in farming cash and cash rent tenant provisions. They'd also need to meet foreign persons, be compliant with adjusted gross income or AGI provisions, and then be in compliant with highly rotable and wetland provisions. Payment limitation for the program is $125,000 and that's goes through a direct attribution process. In addition, for other compliance provisions for our PLC producers must devote acreage equal to the base acres to an agricultural conserving use. They also need to effectively control noxious weeds and otherwise maintain the land on the farm according to sound agricultural practices. They need to file an annual acreage report with FSA, and then they need to file a production report or a certified yield report by farm if they selected ArcIC as the program they wanted to enroll in. Additional information that can be found on the Arc PLC program is available on our national Arc PLC website, found at the link on the screen here. That PLC yield or projected PLC yield payment rate can be found under program data, and then under resources there are a couple other calculators available to help you make program elections. If you want to take a look at that, but I would recommend using NDSU's calculators, and that can be found on the NDSU Farm Bill and FSA program site. And that link is listed here on the screen, and that's what Ron will be going through here shortly are the two calculators there that were updated on January 14th for the Arc PLC calculator and on January 12th for the Arc individual calculator. To help you in completing Ron's spreadsheets, you can go to your local county office and ask them to provide you with an FSA Arc PLC producer information sheet. The sheet will provide you the base acres, the PLC yield, what your current program election is, whether there's grass idle fellow eligibility issues with the farm or not and whether it's enrolled in a multi-year program enrollment or not. This is just a screen print of what that information sheet looks like. As you can see, it'll list the administrative county where that land is administered out of. It'll list the farm numbers that you have in that county. It'll list who the owners are. It gives you each base crop on that farm, what the base acres are, what the PLC yield is listed at, what your current program elections are. If you're okay with that current program election, you're not required to change it, but you do need to enroll annually, and then it'll tell you what the grass idle fellow or GIF eligibility is, and then if there's a multi-year enrollment on that farm or not. I stated this at the beginning, but just as a reminder that the deadline is March 15th to make any program election changes, and you do need to enroll annually into the Arc PLC program. So even if you're not going to make a change to a program election, you still need to enroll that farm to be eligible for payment, and the deadline to do that is also March 15th. The only exception would be is if you're not going to change a program election and no other program changes have been made to a farm and you selected a multi-year contract during the 2019 enrollment period, then you would not need to do any other action at your local FSA office. It would just move forward to the 2022 year with the program elections you chose in 2019, and it would already be considered as enrolled for 2022. With that, I will turn it over to Ron, and here's my contact information. If you have any further questions, and then we'll go through Lindsay, we'll bring up any questions that you put in the chat after Ron's presentation. So hand it over to you, Ron. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm going to demonstrate two calculators that we've developed. The first one is called the Arc PLC calculator. It's trying to keep it very simple and very transparent for anyone to use. It's not perfect by any means because we don't allow for irrigation or multi-county as Laura had mentioned, if you have a control county and you have land in other physical areas in other counties, this may not be perfect for you, but you may want to put some different numbers in there just to try to jerry rig it to make it work. But it's kind of for one county and for non-irrigated. Basically, you fill in the yellow blocks, you put your name and your farm number, and remember this is by farm number. We have the ability here to pick four different states, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. And then with any of those states, you pick your county. There's just an example in here using Cass County. Okay, here's where you could actually pick whatever county you're in. Very simple. The first thing, the base acres and the PLC payment yield, that is the easy part. You get that from the sheet that Laura talked about, the producer information sheet for the farm, you put in your base acres, you put in your PLC yield right off that. The next thing is the difficult part. The estimation for 2022. And what is your yield going to be in 2022? Well, who really knows, but you got to take a stab at it. Probably the best is to put kind of an average yield. Because how else can you determine, you mean, are you going to predict that there's going to be a drought or whatever? I don't know. And the next thing is the marketing year average price. Remember now, this is the national marketing year average price. It's not the North Dakota price. And so I've got some numbers in here as a guide. And you may say, well, what's that wheat number so low for? Well, remember, this is the national price. It includes winter wheat as well. So you can change any of these in the yellow blocks here. And this is just something in here for you as a guide. And based on the numbers we put in here right now, you can see there's no payments for ARC or PLC. And as Laura mentioned, the projection is there probably will be no payments. Okay. And if you scroll down the second block, it shows all these negative numbers. And that's very transparent. It shows you how things are calculated. And it comes up with a zero. The third table, just to mention, we picked Cass County, and it brought in all the information for Cass County. I want to show you a couple more tabs. The ARC tabs, that's for the yields for the various counties. And these are the historical yields for the various counties. Go back to the program tab. Now I will just put a number in here just for just to demonstrate I'll put a very low yield of 10 bushels an acre for wheat. And notice there that it shows a ARC County payment. Okay. And I will change that back. Now, I'm going to put in a very low price for wheat. Let's just say $4 a bushel. And here you get a PLC payment, and there's a possibility of an ARC payment. So there you would pick which pick which one you want to be enrolled in for that crop. I'll put it back again. But the common situation is, hey, there's zero for both which program should I be in. And I'll have a chart chart to show you at the end here but if you if you think the prices are going to drop, maybe you want to be in PLC. If you think the yields going to be drop, maybe you want to be an ARC. This is a decision that guests that you need to make. So that that's the basics of the ARC, ARC PLC calculator. It's, it's, it's pretty simple from the user point. If you're putting in the information, you basically just put in all of your base crops, your and base acres and and yields and then make some some wild guesses on on on the on your on the future. Okay. I guess I wanted to show you this to I guess I'm going to put this 10 bushel back in here. If you notice back here under wheat, it shows you what the payment rate is. I'll put the that down to four again, and you can see how things are calculated down here. Those negatives go away for wheat. Okay, that's it for the ARC calculator. I'm going to stop sharing. And then I'm going to bring up my other calculator. The ARC IC calculator. Now this is kind of a whole different whole different animal is Laura went through it there. Here you need to enroll all of your crops for the farm, any farms that are enrolled. And if you enroll more than one farm, they need to all be combined. We allow up to three farms. Okay, if you have more than three you want to enroll in our IC. I guess you're kind of out of luck here other than you may want to add some numbers together and try to force a force it in here. On this simple example here we've got a farm number with the with the the crop plan and the and the total base acres. And then we've got, and that's remember the yellow blocks is what you fill in. And then we'll just say, for this farm then we're going to say 60 acres of wheat and 100 acres of soybeans, and then going down to the next table. It pulls in the the marketing your average prices for those for those years you don't have to worry about that. The next thing you need to enter then in the yellow blocks is what is your yield yields from the past years. Okay. Now, down in the fine print here. It says, enter the higher of the actual yield or 80% of tea. When the crops were grown. So 80% of tea, here is a tab you can look at. If you want to look up your county and crop. Okay, the next thing is on the fine print here. If the crop was not grown, such as a prevent plant situation, then you enter the higher of the county average yield, or 80% of tea. And here's another tab here showing the county average yields. Okay, in a situation like this. If you have prevent plant in some years, or if you plan if you plan on having a very low yield, let's say for this current year, or prevent plant and have a zero yield, you're going to, it probably would pay to be in the arch IC program. You can see based on the numbers I put in here the bottom table shows you the final bottom line, and it shows no payment. Let me put in a number here of this say 10 bushel wheat that still didn't change it. Let me put in a low price here of four still didn't change it. I have to go a little lower here I'll just put in zero. There, it starts to kick in where you'd get some kind of a payment. And as Laura mentioned on the payments at 65%. You don't have to worry about any of the calculations, they're all done accordingly. So this is something that you may want to take a look at the arc I see it may not be for everybody, but it probably would be beneficial if you had prevent plant for a very, very low yields. Okay, I'm going to show you one last slide here. So, here is a chart that says how do how do you want to make this decision here. If you think commodity prices are going to remain high. And you think that the county, you can think the county yields are going to be average or above, you probably will get no PLC and probably will get no arc payments. If you think that commodity prices are going to remain high. And if you think that the yields are going to be down and maybe we're going to have another drought. You wouldn't you probably wouldn't get a PLC payment but you might get an arc payment. If you think the prices are going to drop. But you think the yields are going to be the same, or the average, you might get a PLC payment but more than likely not an arc payment. And if you think those, though, everything's going to drop the prices are going to drop and the deals are going to drop, you probably could get a PLC payment or an arc payment and then you need to choose. It's one of these decisions is kind of a real a real guess, but you just want to try and do your best at in this situation. With that then we have questions regarding arc and PLC so far for either Laura or I and I see there is some questions in the chat box. And I failed to fail to introduce Lindsay Abercroft, she's going to monitor the Q&A box here. And so I'll turn it over to you, Lindsay, and what do we have for questions. All right, we've got some really good questions in the Q&A box right now for you Ron and also for Laura. The first question that we have, is there any option in the near future to update base acres for crops growing on the farm. This is a really good question. This is Laura Heinrich. At this point we do not know because they haven't finalized what the next farm bill will look like so I am not aware of what Congress is looking at for whether you'd be able to update your bases or not, but just make sure you look when we start running the next year or 2024 in future years to just make sure you're looking at Lindsay's crystal promote at the end, signing up for our delivery bulletins and newsletters. And we would provide that information to you as soon as we are aware that that maybe may or may not be an option. Good. Okay, so the next question that we have here is when signing up for ARC or PLC is it by farm number, even if the farm is made up of two different county land. So if you have one farm number so farm 1000 but it's made up of track 100 that's physically located in Barnes County and track 200 that's physically located in Cass County. You're going to sign up for the farm so it would be only one sign up and you'd make an election for the land that's physically located in the other counties. All right, is ARC IC eligible for SEO under federal crop insurance. For that question I'm going to have you speak to your, your crop insurance agent, the way the fact sheet reads on the RMA or risk management agency website it does say agricultural risk coverage is ineligible for SEO. I would want you to talk to your local crop insurance agent to find out what whether ARC IC and our county are eligible or not when you enroll into SEO, the acreage that would be enrolled under ARC IC or our county. The MYA price is calculated how monthly price for the calendar year of 2022, or is it 12 months. It's based on the marketing year for that specific crop. So if you go back and look at the. Or upload the PowerPoint to the NDSU website, you can look at this, the slide I provided that had the PLC projected payment rates, and it has the marketing year average for each commodity or marketing year for each covered commodity listed there. And so what it does is it looks at those years for that or those months for that commodity, and then it takes a weighted average of what the prices are for each month. All right. And then one of the popular questions that Scott's been helping answer was a few people are wondering about the PowerPoint presentation. And if they will be able to access that after the presentation and the question or the answer to that question is yes. And Scott so kindly provided a link. And that will also be where the recording is for this webinar. And then we have a question that is requesting a copy of the page that Ron is using. I'm assuming this individual is looking for the calculator run. Yeah, and that is on our website as well. Okay, yep, the RPLC decision sheet. Yep. All right. Good. All right, and then moving into the chat box. We had a question with the low yields in 2021. McLean County due to the drought conditions is there a recommended program that would be more beneficial. Our county versus PLC. Well, good question. It depends on you know the inputs that you put in but but you know it kind of more depends on what you think is going to happen this year, not what happened last year. If you think it's going to be a drought this year and have a very low yield. I would, I guess I would suggest, and you think prices are going to remain high, I would suggest, you know, our county then, but, but there's a lot, there's a lot to the more, a lot to that more, more to that decision than just, just that but that's what that would be my first. Yes. All right, well for now, I think that wraps up the question that we have in the Q&A in the chat. Thank you. So we're going to move on now and we're going to have Kristin Knudson, and she's going to she's going to talk about the NAP program and a few other programs with FSA. Thanks, Ron, and Lindsay really appreciate that. I just want to cover a few items today at the end of the art PLC presentation, and the, I just want to cover today, the disaster linkage requirements for disaster programs that we just had. We're going to talk briefly about some organic programs and some upcoming deadlines, the NAP program itself so that's the non insured disaster program for crops that aren't covered by federal crop insurance, and then go over a few FSA resources for everybody. So when we talk about the disaster program linkage requirements, we're talking about those recent 2018 and 2019 with plus and QLA program payments that you may have received as a requirement to keep those program benefits that you received. They're also required to meet linkage. So that means that you are required to obtain federal crop insurance or NAP coverage as applicable depending on which crop you were paid on at the equivalent of 60, 100 level, or an equivalent level for each of the crops that you were paid on. The requirement to keep those benefits means that you have to have those have insurance and meet that linkage requirement for the first two consecutive years of 2022 and 2023. If you do not meet the linkage requirement in 2022 and 2023, you will be notified by FSA to refund with plus and QLA benefits plus interest. So if you did perhaps obtain sufficient coverage in a consecutive prior year, for example, you obtained coverage in 2021 on those crops you received payment on, and then you're going to do it for 2022. There is an exception that will be reviewed for each producer on a case by case basis, and make sure that you will be notified if there's any information that you would need to do to provide to us. If you did not meet our linkage requirements to refund those benefits. So the important thing is if you received any whip plus or QLA benefits for 2018 or 2019, you need to make sure that you are meeting that linkage requirement and obtaining it crop insurance underneath your federal crop insurance policy, or NAP coverage for those crops you received payment on for two consecutive years. The next two programs I want to cover are specifically for our organic producers. So there is a pandemic assistance program that's running right now through Friday, and a few days on February 4. That is the deadline. It's called the organic and transitional education and certification program, or OTCP. This program was developed to offer some pandemic assistance to cover certification and educational expenses for producers and operations with certified or transitional organic crops and operations. This information includes crops, livestock, wild crops, handling fees, and any state organic program fees, transitional expenses, educational expenses, and soil testing. So if you do think that you would qualify for any of these expenses, please contact your county office by this coming Friday, February 4 to apply for the program. The next organic program I want to briefly cover is OCCSP or the organic cost share, organic certification cost share program. This program is an annual program that offsets the cost of certification, allowing our organic producers and handlers across the country to take advantage of those economic opportunities in the growing organic market. The OCCSP reimburses organic producers and handlers for as much as 50% of their organic certification costs up to a maximum of $500 annually. Most producers apply through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture because they receive a grant from FSA to administer the program as well. But if you did not receive this reimbursement through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture, you can contact your local county FSA office to apply. You cannot apply in both the Department of Ag and FSA. You have to pick one organization to apply in. All right, the next item we're going to cover is NAP. So we mentioned this earlier. What is NAP all about? The NAP program is an assistance program to producers to protect against financial losses that occur due to the impacts of natural disaster. Crops that can be covered underneath a NAP program or a non-insured assistance program policy are crops for which federal crop insurance, excluding pilot coverage, or insurance are not available. So if your crop that you're growing is not covered by federal crop insurance in your county, you would be eligible to obtain NAP coverage on that crop. There's a payment limitation similar to our other FSA programs that apply to the NAP program of $125,000. As you are looking at possibly taking it NAP coverage on your crops that are not covered by federal crop insurance, there are a couple different options. The first option is basic coverage. So that coverage is available at 50% of your producers established yield for the crop at 55% of the established price. And we do have to have a service fee for all of our NAP applications for coverage, which is $325 per crop. If you were wanting to obtain buy up coverage, which is another option for our NAP crops, you can decide the coverage level between 50 and 65% of the approved yield for your crop and 100% of the established price. Once again, there is a service fee of $325 and a 5.2 25% premium fee. Buy up coverage is not available for crops intended for grazing. And if you are new to an app policy, buy up coverage does also have another requirement to meet growing history. So you have to have grown the crop in a prior year and reported that on an acreage report for FSA and obtained a yield of 50% of the county average yield to meet that growing history requirement. So we talk about these service fees and premiums. If you are a beginning farmer limited resource farmer or underserved farmer rancher, you can have your $325 service fee for your application waived. And then if you take buy up coverage and are eligible for the buy up coverage. You would have 50% of your premium reduced. So if you qualify for one of these underserved farmer rancher provisions, and you file your applicable forms with the county office, you can have your service fee waived, and you can have your premium reduced by 50%. There is a maximum service fee for all producers that apply for nap coverage, which is $825 per producer per administrative county, not to exceed $1950 for a producer that may have multiple farming interests in multiple counties. By be asking okay so I kind of know a little bit about the nap program, but how does it really work. It works very similar to federal crop insurance. Okay, so it's just like insurance coverage that's what we're doing. It's an insurance coverage for crops that federal crop insurance does not cover. Just as a reminder, if you're a beginning farmer or veteran farmer for the last 10 years, or you may qualify as socially disadvantaged, you may also apply for that service fee waiver and have your premium reduced 50%. So make sure that producers that may have that service fee wavered, take an interest in taking a nap policy because if you take a basic coverage policy, you don't have any additional premiums do, because it's not a buy up policy. And if you qualify to have your service fee waived, then the nap basic coverage policy is free to you, as long as you complete other policy requirements crops that may be eligible for nap insurance. Crops that are planted or grown for livestock consumption, grain and forage crops, and that can include native forage that you may have certified on your acreage report. Crops grown for food fruits and vegetables for example, crops grown for fiber such as him crops grown in a controlled environment such as mushrooms and floor culture, and then some specialty crops, such as honey and maple sap. And while honey is also covered under federal crop insurance as a pilot program. Since it is a pilot program with federal crop insurance we can cover it underneath the nap program as well. If you were to suffer disaster you couldn't accept disaster benefits, both through federal crop insurance and through your nap policies, but you could certainly take a policy on both. So some examples. In our region that may be covered by the nap policy grazing acreage mixed forage acreage that you may have grapes berries apples lettuce squash pumpkin strawberries, the fruits and vegetables list can go on and on, they're covered by nap policies. So if you do decide to take a nap policy, and you may be questioning whether or not you're going to receive benefits is it worth taking the nap policy or not. The nap program does allow for eligible causes of loss due to natural disasters to be submitted to the county office towards an application for payment and benefits. Some natural disasters that may occur on your crop could include drought freeze hail, excessive moisture, excessive wind. Natural occurrence such as a flood conditions that are related to damaging weather or adverse natural occurrences, such as excessive heat plant disease and infect us insect infestation. Okay, so there are lots of natural disasters that could assist in having an eligible cause of loss on your crop. So how do you apply for the nap program. It's important to make sure that if you apply for the nap program you understand that deadlines for the nap program are very important. It's important to make sure that as a producer, you're meeting the deadlines so that your nap insurance policy could pay out and potentially provide you benefits if you have a natural disaster and eligible cause of loss. So if you need to apply for coverage timely, you need to report your crop on the acres report timely. You would also need to file a notice of loss timely report production and an application for payment. 15th of 2022 is the upcoming 2022 nap coverage deadline for spring print planted crops perennial and other forages. So if you do have any crops that you could take a nap policy on or want to, especially those that you may have received a disaster payment for for 2018 or 19 with plus or QLA, you need to make sure you contact the county office by March 15 of 2022 for the upcoming crop here. To maintain your nap policy, you'll also be required to report your production of the crops that you have on your nap policy. You have to report that production to the county office to maintain your approval database. And that production has to be reported the later of the subsequent year acres reporting date or 60 years after the normal harvest date. The production reporting date does vary by crop based on the normal harvest date and when that crop acres report is required. So if you have any questions about what dates you need to provide your production to the county office. Just let them know and they can certainly provide that information to you specifically for each crop you have on your policy. So if you take a policy, we talked about the eligible disasters earlier, but what happens if you do suffer one of those disasters. It's important to maintain your nap coverage and to be eligible for potential program benefits to file what's called a notice of loss. That notice of loss has to be filed with the county office within 15 days of that natural disaster. And when that became apparent as a loss to you as a producer. It's one of those hand harvested crops that are more fragile. You have to provide those notifications to the county office within 72 hours of the loss becoming apparent. So once you filed your notice of loss with the county office, you may be contacted by the county office and a loss adjuster maybe also needed to complete any sort of appraisal and process to make sure that your notice of loss and your application for coverage and your nap policy can be maintained and accurate for potential program benefits. Sorry, skip to the next slide I wasn't quite ready. So once you file a notice of loss, timely with the county office within 15 days or 72 hours of its hand harvested. When it comes time to file an application for payment what do you need to do. So those applications for payment need to be filed to the county office within 60 days. It's a coverage period ending so 60 days after the final harvest stage. So that's another important date that you would need to know regarding your nap policy. When is the final harvest date for this crop for my county. So that I can make sure I file my application for payment timely so the county office can get that process to see if I'm eligible for program benefits. It's highly important if you have a nap policy to communicate any changes on that crop and any actions that you want to do with that crop with the county office as soon as you know, making sure that communication with the county office is highly important for your nap policy to maintain it. There's a couple websites that you can access regarding the nap program. You can access some information on the USDA Farm Service Agency website. And then there is a link to a fact sheet here that also has some basic information on the nap program itself. You can always go online to access information about any of our programs on www.fsa.usda.gov. And then there's also a link on this slide to all of our program fact sheets. And I also want to mention and we'll make sure it's updated in the presentation that we pose. So access information for our programs on www.farmers.gov and on the farmers.gov website. If you want to access your own farm information. For instance, a copy of some forms that you may find useful like the FSA 15060Z that lists all of the crop information and farm information ownership, base acres, elections information like that. And there is a link on that farmers.gov website that will allow you to create an account and access your own information with FSA. We'll make sure we update that on the slide as well for you when we post it. You can also go into any county office that you have across the state beware that currently there are some COVID restrictions that we're still implementing in our county offices so always call the county office before you would try to stop by. You have county office in every county except for Slope County. Right. Yep, except for Slope County. I just double check. So slope and billings right so we have a county office located in and all the cities indicated on this map, the smaller towns indicated on this map are where program county offices are, and if you're a farm loan customer. We didn't talk about that today, but if you're a farm loan customer, the farm loan officers offices are in a darker shade on the map with a bigger bullet point. You can also go to farmers.gov and click on the find your local service center link for any service center in the entire nation. Most importantly, it's important to make sure that you are keeping up to date on all of our programs, our application deadlines, information changing. FSA is continually evolving additional programs or having updated guidelines and deadlines for our producers. I just want to make sure that you as a producer sign up for our gov delivery emails and text messages as well, so that you can be up to date on any sort of upcoming deadlines that you may be applicable to you as a producer and your specific operation. We also announced new programs through gov delivery emails, and that's like the new newsletter. So that gov delivery replaces a paper newsletter, so it's really important to make sure that you sign up for those emails so you can be aware of any new programs, any upcoming deadlines for existing programs, and just make sure that you keep and be more knowledgeable about your program availability and eligibility with the Farm Service Agency. With that, I just want to open it up for questions. And Kristen, there is a couple of more questions in the chat box. The first one is there any word on an implementation date of WIP plus payments for crop losses in 2020 and 2021. That's a great question. We do not have any sort of information that we can provide regarding the implementation of any disaster programs that may have been passed in legislation regarding the 2020 and 2021 year, and we don't have any policy or regulations at this point in time. As soon as we do though, you'll want to make sure you sign up for those gov deliveries because I'm sure that Lindsay will be putting out a press release as soon as anything is announced for you. So make sure you sign up for those so that you are aware of that information as soon as it becomes available to us. Well, all right, and then another one, does the producer need to request with the FSA County Office, the exception for the linkage requirement, if coverage requirements were met in 2021, or does the FSA County Office automatically accomplish this step. Sure, that's also a great question. Make sure that you're taking coverage for two consecutive years. So you would need to take coverage for if you did it in 2021 in 2022 as well. Okay, so make sure you're doing that I just, and that's not part of the question but I want to make sure you would be eligible for the potential exception. We don't have specific guidelines right now, as to see if the producers will need to provide any additional information to meet those exceptions, or if the County Office can will have data available to us that would allow for us to indicate you do meet those exceptions So until we have that information and it'll be this coming summer in the summer of 2022 our County offices will be provided some guidance and policy regarding what would be required to meet those exceptions or not so unfortunately we don't know that information right now but it will be provided in the near future and the County Office will definitely contact you if they need you to provide anything to meet that exception as well. I don't see any more questions and I'll turn it back over to you Ron. Okay, yeah we, it looks like we answered all of them in the Q amp a and the chat. So, with with there being there's no more questions. I think we're ready to call it a day. I appreciate everyone attending. Thank you to the great staff at North Dakota FSA office and for giving us all this valuable information and as I mentioned the recording will be posted, and the PowerPoints will be posted on the NDSU extension website in the near future. So with that, I will call it a day and thank you.