Farm Bill decision-aid Workshop set For Jan. 21 In San Angelo

Jan 14, 2015

By Steve Byrns

The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service will conduct a farm bill decision aid-workshop from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Region 15 Education Center, 612 S. Irene St. in San Angelo.

“This workshop is specifically tailored to producers who don’t have Internet access, are uncomfortable with the data entry process or with interpreting the generated results from that data entry,” said Bill Thompson, AgriLife Extension economist at San Angelo and the workshop’s main speaker.

The new farm bill eliminated many of the commodity programs producers were familiar with and had used for years, Thompson said. This new program gives producers the ability to choose between three distinctly different commodity programs in addition to possibly reallocating crop base acres and updating program yields.

“The details of these programs can be complex to comprehend and very difficult to work through to determine which program best addresses the risk-management need of each farm,” Thompson said. “This is why the Agriculture and Food Policy Center in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University has developed an online producer decision aid, specifically for helping producers with these options. The decision aid is available at https://usda.afpc.tamu.edu/ .

“The decision aid also requires a lot of historical data, which is readily available from their crop insurance agent and the FSA office. The data entry process is relatively simple and the results are available almost instantly, allowing producers to run multiple scenarios quickly to determine which option best fits their respective operation.”

Thompson said through this hands-on workshop, producers will enter actual production data and begin to evaluate their choices from among the Price Loss Coverage, or PLC, program and two distinctly different Agricultural Risk Coverage, or ARC, programs. With this information, Thompson said producers will be able to sign up their farms at their respective Farm Service Agency office.

The workshop is free, but participants are asked to RSVP by Jan. 20 by calling the AgriLife Extension office in Tom Green County at 325-659-6524.

source:agrilife.org

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.