5-31 IAN Wet Wheat 1

 Wet makes wheat farmers weep.  Let me talk to a northern Idaho producer and when you hear his story regarding the wet, the mud, though whether you would describe it like this: “it ain’t pretty.” 

 Robert Blair has been a very successful farmer over the years with wheat, the legumes, and a variety of other crops. But this year he tried to get out into his fields and his machinery got bogged down in the mud. So what’s a guy to do between sitting it out, insurance and the whole 9 yards. Here is our conversation. Describe what it looks like right now. Right now it’s dried up. I can get out into the fields but we are past the deadlines, the insurance deadlines, the final plant (FPP) It is what it is called. We are looking at  acreage down, potentially poor wheat legumes because of the time frame, so we are up in the air and what has happened is, on both grains and legumes if you miss the final plant period, you miss a certain percentage per day even though you paid for it. The other thing that happens is if I can get out there and plant crop I will do it. If I take preventative plant it doesn’t exclude me from planting crop at this point in time. I just have too report it. So you have 72 hours from final plant period to declare if you were going to take preventative plant and from that final plant period you have 15 days to report to Farm Service Agency. I am not going to plant anything.