Title: To amend the Agricultural Act of 2014 to require the Secretary of Agriculture to use certain data in determining an actual or benchmark county yield, and for other purposes.
Policy area: Agriculture and Food

Summary:
This bill amends the Agricultural Act of 2014, with respect to the Agricultural Risk Coverage program, to require the Department of Agriculture to: (1) use specified data to assign actual or benchmark county yields, and (2) make payments to producers using the payment rate of the county of the physical location of the base acres of a farm.

[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 4654 Introduced in House (IH)]

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115th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 4654

   To amend the Agricultural Act of 2014 to require the Secretary of 
 Agriculture to use certain data in determining an actual or benchmark 
                 county yield, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           December 14, 2017

 Mr. Cramer (for himself, Mr. Loebsack, Mr. Emmer, Mrs. Noem, and Mr. 
  Peterson) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                        Committee on Agriculture

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
   To amend the Agricultural Act of 2014 to require the Secretary of 
 Agriculture to use certain data in determining an actual or benchmark 
                 county yield, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. IMPROVEMENTS TO THE AGRICULTURE RISK COVERAGE PROGRAM.

    Section 1117(g)(4) of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (7 U.S.C. 
9017(g)(4)) is amended to read as follows:
            ``(4) in the case of county coverage--
                    ``(A) effective beginning with actual yields for 
                the 2017 crop year, assign an actual county yield for 
                each planted acre for the crop year for the covered 
                commodity--
                            ``(i) for a county for which county data 
                        collected by the Risk Management Agency is 
                        sufficient, as determined by the Secretary, to 
                        offer a county-wide insurance product using the 
                        actual average county yield determined by the 
                        Risk Management Agency; or
                            ``(ii) for a county not described in clause 
                        (i) using--
                                    ``(I) other sources of yield 
                                information (including consultation 
                                with the applicable State office of the 
                                Farm Service Agency); or
                                    ``(II) the yield history of 
                                representative farms in the State, 
                                region, or crop reporting district, as 
                                determined by the Secretary;
                    ``(B) assign a benchmark county yield for a crop 
                year using the actual county yield assigned in the 
                prior crop year under subparagraph (A); and
                    ``(C) make payments, as applicable, to producers 
                using the payment rate of the county of the physical 
                location of the base acres of a farm.''.
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