Tressel said a 1,500-acre grower spends about 12 hours compiling the data they need before going into their local FSA office to file and complete the paperwork.
Like most other software programs, there is some up-front time required to get the account set up. But for most, connecting MyAgData to their cloud-based precision planting software — which includes John Deere, Cash IH, Climate Fieldview, Topcon and FieldAlytics — takes about an hour or so. From there, the annual process becomes fairly turn-key, pulling your data from the cloud into the required reports, similar to the experience with filing federal taxes through software like TurboTax.
Aside from saving time, filing reports with precision planting data allows farmers to report actual planted acreage rather than using FSA’s Common Land Units (CLUs).
“Most of the CLUs in use today were created in the early 2000s by technicians hand drawing boundaries from the best imagery available at the time. In the effort to capture all the tillable acres possible with this process, the result was these CLU field boundaries are overstated by 3% to as much as 10%,” Tressel said. “The unintended consequence of that is growers are overpaying crop insurance based on their excess acres.”
The result is that switching to actual planted acreage saves about $3,000 on a 1,500-acre farmer’s premium for crop insurance.
What’s more, “when your base acres are larger than what you’re actually farming, you’re diluting your APH yield,” Tressel said. A higher actual production history (APH) yield results in a better insurance guarantee.
For Connealy, whose farm has 35 center pivots, electronic reporting finally allowed him to report accurate irrigated acreage. Before, he reported entire fields as either irrigated or dryland, which lowered the field’s overall APH yield because it included the dryland corners. Now, he can prove the different yields for crops under irrigation and those in dryland corners.
He had to take the county average yields on those corners initially while he builds up the separate yield history needed to generate an APH yield, but over the long term, it should result in a guarantee that’s more likely to reflect field conditions.
Connealy likes to use Agrimatic’s Libra system to overlay yield data onto the harvest maps in his John Deere Operations Center.
“It sounds like a lot, but now that these systems are talking to each other, it’s a lot easier than it used to be,” he said. “And it hopefully should get easier with time as we break down these data silos.”
Connealy considers himself an early adopter of a lot of technology. He expects the majority of growers to file digitally within three or four years as farmers become more comfortable with disclosing their data under certain conditions.
Tressel stressed MyAgData won’t use farmers’ information for anything else. “We’re here to solely help them transact in a regulatory manner moving from manual to digital,” she said. The company is also working on projects to help farmers with compliance reporting for carbon programs that are in the works.
In addition, MyAgData supports local FSA offices as they also navigate the new frontier of digital filing.
“The farmer has spent the time to have all their data input correctly, and we want to make sure that those benefits are actually executed in that third step, which is at the FSA,” Tressel said.
She expects farmers to switch to digital reporting as they see the efficiencies but adds that accurate data saves the government money too.
USDA subsidizes crop insurance by paying 60% or more of the premium. In North Dakota, for example, the subsidy rate is 68%. North Dakota growers spent $1.5 billion on crop insurance last year. If they all adopted electronic reporting and reduced their CLUs by 3%, it would result in $45 million of total annual savings, with $30 million accruing to the federal government and $15 million staying in farmers’ pockets.
“It doesn’t happen very often that you can be in a situation where everyone is winning,” Tressel said.
To learn more about filing your acreage reports electronically visit https://myagdata.com/….
Editor’s Note: DTN is working in cooperation with MyAgData to promote electronic filing.
Katie Dehlinger can be reached at katie.dehlinger@dtn.com
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