Growers hear variety of topics

PONTIAC – In these tougher financial times for agriculture, crop insurance is the last thing you want to cut.

That’s the advice of Doug Yoder with Country Financial who was among the presenters at the recent Agronomy Day event in Pontiac, hosted by the Livingston County Farm Bureau, Evergreen FS and Country agents Darryl Tinges and Marlon Eilts.

Yoder believes crop insurance provides the best protection for farmers. There are some small changes this year which include corn prevent plant coverage being 55 percent of the product guarantee for timely planted acreage. This was previously 60 percent. Also, enterprise units are now available for high-risk ground.

“Higher guarantees are going to be important in this environment we are in,” Yoder explained.

Yoder suggests a checklist which includes the policy and coverage level needed, unit structure, prevent plant buy-up, yield adjustment and yield exclusion.

The signup deadline for federal crop insurance is March 15. More insurance information can be found at www.countryfinancial.com or by contacting an agent in the area.

When it comes to the current farm bill, 2015 crop year payments were issued in October and we saw some nice payments last year from the Price Loss Coverage program. Yoder believes there are “a lot of eggs in one basket” with the ARC-County program. Farmers are by no means getting rich on these payments but are simply trying to narrow the gap on a loss.

Livingston County Farm Bureau Manager Jody Hughes was pleased with this year’s Agronomy Day and enjoyed working with the sponsor companies to get more speakers and better attendance.

“We have seen our attendance increase by about 25 people this year,” Hughes said.

Water quality, soil management and agricultural data were among the topics covered at the Livingston County Agronomy Day held at the University of Illinois Extension Office on Locust Street in Pontiac.