MWCA Livestock Insurance Proposal Released
The Midwest Council on Agriculture has put forward proposals to improve livestock insurance programs in the 2023 Farm Bill.
MWCA Livestock Insurance Proposal for 2023 Farm Bill
· Support affordable risk management tools that incentivize participation including Livestock Gross Margin, Livestock Risk Protection and Dairy Revenue Protection standards as released for the 2024 crop year.
· Advocate for clear language to ensure producers are not penalized, and are able to benefit from utilizing risk management tools in the event of depopulation due to declared emergency or disaster.
· Support uninterrupted visibility to price discovery and endorse reauthorization of livestock mandatory reporting and designating Market News employees as essential in the farm bill.
Livestock Mandatory Reporting
We support including reauthorization of livestock mandatory reporting in the farm bill and designating Market News employees as essential to ensure uninterrupted visibility to price discovery.
Dairy Revenue Protection
We support the standards released on Dairy Revenue Protection for the 2024 crop year. We would advocate for Increased premium subsidies to this program, allowing coverage to be more affordable especially in deferred quarters.
Livestock Gross Margin
We support the Livestock Gross Margin insurance policy and appreciate the revisions made to: Allow the ability to use both programs within the same year, provided there is not overlap of LRP and LGM programs and Increase number of head eligible for coverage
We advocate for:
1. Updating marketing report to include modern reporting methodology (electronic summary reports) in addition to packer/processor sales receipts.
2. Allow for payments if market ready animals are not allowed to go to market due to supply chain disruptions (declared state of emergency, ie. COVID).
3. Allow for payments if depopulation is mandated by government due to Foreign Animal Disease (and animals are not allowed to go to market).
4. Increasing the subsidy to make the program more affordable for all, but especially for a period of 10 years for young/emerging farmers and ranchers to align with other support for that segment of producers.
5. Add a Class IV option to LGM-Dairy (Currently only Class III can be covered)
Livestock Risk Protection
We support the Livestock Risk Protection standards as released for the 2024 crop year.
We advocate for:
1. Changing the minimum weight for unborn dairy feeder cattle option to less than 100 lbs (Ideally 50 lbs to capture some of the smaller dairy breeds like jerseys) as many producers sell their bull calves as day old, and they are rarely 100 lbs when day old.
2. Increased premium subsidies to this program, allowing coverage to be more affordable and increased participation.
3. Allow a producer to increase the price protection by rolling the LRP price up as livestock prices increase
4. Allowing insurance to follow the animal after a sale so that a buyer has the same policy attached.