U.S. Ag Department Accepting Applications for Dairy Margin Coverage Program on December 13th

Thursday, December 9th, 2021 -- 11:01 AM

(Wisconsin Ag Connection) The U.S. Department of Agriculture will begin accepting applications for the Dairy Margin Coverage program on December 13, which will also include supplemental production enrollment.

According to the Wisconsin Ag Connection, USDA Under Secretary Robert Bonnie made the announcement on Wednesday, saying DMC is a critical safety-net for producers, and catastrophic coverage is free.

"We encourage dairy producers to make use of the support provided by enrolling in supplemental coverage and enroll in DMC for the 2022 program year," Bonnie said.

Supplemental DMC will provide $580 million to better help small- and mid-sized dairy operations that have increased production over the years but were not able to enroll the additional production. Now, they will be able to retroactively receive payments for that supplemental production.

Coverage is applicable to calendar years 2021, 2022 and 2023. Eligible dairy operations with less than 5 million pounds of established production history may enroll supplemental pounds based upon a formula using 2019 actual milk marketings, which will result in additional payments.

Signup for the DMC runs through February 18 at the Farm Service Agency. The program a voluntary risk management tool that offers protection to dairy producers when the difference between the all-milk price and the average feed price falls below a certain dollar amount selected by the producer.

The FSA reports that the program has paid out $1.1 billion in DMC payments so far in 2021.

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