Farm Bill meeting Dec. 4 in San Saba

The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has scheduled a Farm Bill meeting in San Saba on Dec. 4. The event will start at 8 a.m. at the San Saba Civic Center in Mill Pond Park at 1007 E. Wallace St.

“The focus of the meeting will be updating program yields and choosing between Agricultural Risk Coverage, ARC, and Price Loss Coverage, PLC,” said event speaker Bill Thompson, AgriLife Extension economist, San Angelo. “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.”

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 also be demonstrated.

“There are several decisions that producers will soon have to make when signing up for programs,” said Neal Alexander, AgriLife Extension agent for San Saba County. “I hope everyone takes advantage of this free meeting to come learn more about the farm bill, the AFPC tool and to ask questions. This is the time to prepare yourself before you have to make those important decisions.”   

Thompson will also review conservation titles, administrative adjustments to reference prices, commodity loan rates and payment limits.

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