Written by M. Sean High
On August 27, 2015, the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) announced changes to the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection insurance program. These program
revisions are designed to allow “beginning, organic, and fruit and vegetable growers’
better access [to] Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.”
The purpose of Whole-Farm Revenue Protection is to
provide farmers and ranchers the ability “to insure all of the commodities on
their farm at once instead of one commodity at a time.” As a result of this program, many producers
are now provided “access to a risk management safety net…that gives them the
option of embracing more crop diversity on their farm.”
According to USDA, beginning farmers and ranchers
are now granted increased access to Whole-Farm Revenue Protection through a
reduction in the required records from five to three historical years. Furthermore, a beginning farmer or rancher assuming
at least 90 percent of a farm operation may now qualify for the Whole-Farm
Revenue Protection program “by using the former farmer operator’s federal farm
tax records.”
Additionally, USDA is attempting to provide Whole-Farm
Revenue Protection to larger numbers of livestock producers by “remov[ing] the
previous cap that limited participants to those who received 35 percent or less
of their income from livestock production.”
Finally, USDA is striving to provide greater program
availability to expanding operations through an increase in “the cap on
historical revenue for expanding operations to 35 percent from its previous 10
percent.”
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