While the application for your dairy Coronavirus Financial Assistance Program (CFAP) is fairly straight forward, there are a couple of quirks you need to be aware of to fill it out correctly, says Mark Stephenson, a dairy economist with the University of Wisconsin.
CFAP is providing $16 billion of aid to agriculture, with $3 billion of that directed to dairy farmers in the form of direct aid. The program is being administered by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). As of June 3, FSA has already distributed more than $120 million to nearly 7,900 dairy farmers.
But that means that some three-fourths of dairy farmers have yet to receive benefits. Instructions and a downloadable calculator can be found at https://farmers.gov/cfap
Entering eligible milk production is straight-forward, says Stephenson. You simply enter the amount of milk you sold in each month of January, February and March. (Reimbursement rate is $6.80/cwt, but only 80 percent of that will be paid out initially. The remainder will be sent later if funds remain.)
Reimbursement for feed gets a little trickier, though. Reimbursement is the lesser of 50% of your 2019 crop production or the amount of unpriced inventory you had on hand January 15, 2020. You can make a claim for corn and corn silage (though corn silage must be converted to corn grain equivalent). Note: You cannot include any additional corn you bought and inventoried for feed in 2020.
For cull cows, select the drop down for “slaughtered cattle/mature.” Here list the number of cull cows you sold between January 15 and April 15. You can also claim inventoried cattle destined for culling between April 16 and May 14.
For bull calves, select the drop down for “feeder cattle/less than 600 lbs.” Again, list the number of bull calves you sold between January 15 and April 15. For the inventoried number, list the highest number of bull calves you sold on any one day between April 16 and May 14.
Sign-up deadline for the program is August 28. You can listen to Stephenson’s entire 16-minute podcast on CFAP sign-up here.
You can also see a much more detailed explanation of livestock CFAP rules put out by the University of Illinois here.
As of June 3, Wisconsin led the nation in dairy CFAP payments at nearly $34 million with 4,115 Wisconsin farmers applying. New York dairy farmers have received about $15 million and Pennsylvania, $11 million.
