Series kicks off Oct. 15 in Tom Green County
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has scheduled a series of informative Farm Bill sessions across West Texas over the next three months.
“The focus of the meetings will be in updating program yields and choosing between Agricultural Risk Coverage, ARC, and Price Loss Coverage, PLC,” said Bill Thompson, AgriLife Extension economist, San Angelo. “We will have meetings across our agency’s Districts 6 and 7 in order to reach as many producers as possible that are affected by the changes to the Farm Bill and to provide them with information in advance of the decisions they may need to make.
“The yield update process will use crop yields from 2013 through 2017, which gets us away from the drought-affected yields of 2010 and 2011. This is critical because a higher yield is always better,” said Thompson.
Both the ARC and PLC programs have been revised from the 2014 bill. Those changes will be discussed and the online decision aid developed by the Texas A&M University Agriculture and Food Policy Center, AFPC, will be demonstrated.
“There are lots of moving parts to these safety-net programs, and the decision aid does a great job of condensing those variables down to some bottom-line results and probabilities,” Thompson said. “This is a valuable online tool that can give a range of probable dollar figures, once producers know how to properly use it.”
Thompson will also review the conservation titles, administrative adjustments to reference prices, commodity loan rates and payment limits.
All sessions will begin at 8 a.m., except for Fort Hancock which will start at 1 p.m.
The dates and locations are as follows:
Oct. 15, Tom Green County 4-H Building, 3168 N. U.S. Highway 67, San Angelo.
Oct. 24, Stanton Community Center, 301 Saint Theresa St., Stanton.
Oct. 29, AgriLife Extension Center, 1618 Airport Drive, Fort Stockton.
Oct. 30, Angie’s Cafe, 1101 Knox Ave., Fort Hancock.
Nov. 5, El Paso Water Improvement District, 13247 Alameda Ave., Clint.
Nov. 6, Roscoe Community Center, 100 Bois D’Arc St., Roscoe.
Nov. 7, Coleman County Courthouse, 100 W. Live Oak St., Coleman.
Nov. 12, First Baptist Fellowship Hall, 107 N. College Ave., Roby.
Nov. 13, AgriLife Extension office of Taylor County, 1982 Lytle Way, Abilene.
Nov. 26, G.C. Broughton Ag Complex, 2411 Echols Drive, Big Spring.
Dec. 3, Jones County Law Enforcement Training Room, 402 2nd St., Anson.
Dec. 4, San Saba Civic Center, Mill Pond Park, San Saba.
Dec. 5, AgriLife Extension office of Glasscock County, 17 Myrl St., Garden City.
Dec. 10, AgriLife Extension office of Runnels County, 608 Sealy Ave., Ballinger.
Dec. 11, Melvin Community Center, 101 N. Melton, Melton.
For questions or additional information, contact your local AgriLife Extension office or Thompson at 325-653-4576.
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