The nation’s dairy farmers need additional time this fall to consider their risk management options under the new Margin Protection Program (MPP) offered by the USDA, according to the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), which asked the USDA to extend the MPP sign-up deadline by two months.

In a letter (PDF, 82KB) sent Tuesday to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, NMPF said that the upcoming Sept. 30 deadline to enroll in the MPP for 2016 coincides with the fall harvest in many parts of the nation, as well as with the ARC/PLC enrollment deadline. Dairy farmers would benefit from additional time to weigh their options for utilizing both crop insurance and the dairy margin insurance, NMPF said.

The USDA granted two sign-up extensions last year for farmers electing coverage under the MPP, which resulted in a last-minute surge of participation for calendar year 2015. Those extensions “greatly helped to boost enrollment while not complicating the administrative workload of county USDA offices. We believe a similar extension this year, until late November, will likewise enhance participation in the MPP,” wrote NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern.

Mulhern thanked the USDA for providing dairy farmers more flexibility in how they pay their premiums for insurance coverage in the future. The USDA will now allow farmers until Sept. 1, 2016, to pay 100 percent of their premium. (Previously, that deadline was June 1.) The new date allows producers to pay their premium in whole or in part any time prior to Sept. 1 of the coverage year. That change also “could have a positive impact on farmers’ decisions regarding next year’s enrollment, but only if they have sufficient time to make an informed decision,” NMPF wrote.

The USDA also said this week it will allow farmers to pay their premiums to county Farm Service Agency offices through milk check deductions, if a farmer works out such an arrangement with his or her milk handler.

A sign-up extension “would also allow the USDA to continue to work on certain program elements that still need resolution or clarification,” Mulhern said. Critical elements that remain unresolved include enabling dairy farmers to purchase supplemental coverage without having their basic catastrophic coverage reduced below 90 percent and protecting the next generation of farm families by accommodating intergenerational transfers of farm ownership.

Mulhern says that NMPF will continue its push to make the MPP safety net as useful as possible for farmers. The USDA’s actions “are a good step toward providing more flexibility under the MPP program, and we are continuing to work with the agency in an effort to secure additional changes.”  PD

—From National Milk Producers Federation news release