One More ACRE Posting

• July 28, 2009
• Paul Neiffer

I know my readers are probably getting tired of me writing about the ACRE program, however, I think it is very important for you to review how it affects your farm operation and your landlords.  Marcia Zarley Taylor at DTN has several good postings on how the ACRE program works and how to communicate it to your landlord.

I suggest that you read her postings to get up to speed if you are not yet there.

Also, the National Corn Growers Association has a very good 4 page summary of how to communicate ACRE to your landlords.   Remember that as a tenant operator, you must have an agreement from your landlord to enroll in ACRE.  Since many of your landlords may be in the 70’s or 80’s, explaining this to them may be very hard to do.

I find that it is hard for me to completely understand the program and I am a CPA, so I also would think it is very hard for most landlords to understand.  I think to properly communicate this program to your landlords, I would try to work up a three or four page graphical presentation that shows how it would affect their bottom line under three scenarios.

First scenario would show the effect of never getting an ACRE payment over the next four years.  For corn, this would probably cost the farm operation about $20 per acre.  The cost to the landlord would be based upon your split of these payments.

The second scenario would show the effect of getting a decent ACRE payment in one of the next four years.

The last scenario would show the effect of getting two ACRE payments with one being a larger payment based upon lower prices.  The report from the National Corn Growers Association has already done the calculations for you, so you only need to recap this in a nice report for you and your landlord.

Remember, you only have until August 14, 2009 to sign up for the ACRE program.

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