Beef Tips

Tag: Pasture

Value of Forage Insurance during Drought

 By Jennifer Ifft, agricultural policy extension specialist

On October 18, 2022, nearly two-thirds of all Kansas counties were reported as experiencing extreme or exceptional drought. Cattle producers can take many actions to mitigate the impact of drought, including purchasing forage insurance, or Pasture, Rainfall, Forage (PRF) insurance. The deadline to purchase PRF for 2023 is December 1, 2022, but the premium would not be billed until September 23, 2023. In this article, we discuss the what PRF is and report PRF payouts to-date by drought status for all 105 Kansas counties. In 2022, nearly 2.9 million acres were enrolled in PRF in Kansas; USDA reported 15.6 million acres of pastureland in Kansas in 2017. PRF premiums for 2022 totaled about $14 million and PRF has already paid out over $20 million in indemnities.

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Safety Net Program Payments and Drought Costs

Jennifer Ifft, Robin Reid, Cordon Rowley, Agricultural Economics

With ongoing severe drought in many parts of Kansas, cattle producers continue to face tough decisions: how to feed their cattle and whether to increase culling rates. Several safety net programs are available through Federal insurance products (Annual Forage, Pasture Rangeland and ForagePRF, others) and the Farm Service Agency (Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-raised FishELAP, Livestock Forage Disaster ProgramLFP, others). The purpose of these safety net programs is to make payments that would ultimately make these decisions a little less painful: money to help keep feeding your cattle or to save for eventual restocking or a combination of the two. The objective of this article is to provide an example of the magnitude of safety net payments and the financial tradeoffs that cattle producers are currently facing.  Continue reading “Safety Net Program Payments and Drought Costs”