Here’s a Toolbox farmers might want to add to their arsenal. It’s the University of Illinois farmdoc Farm Bill Toolbox. You’ll find articles, videos and FSA documentation.

This website provides educational outreach on 2014 Farm Bill related decisions and tools which are currently under development.

Previously, articles on farmdoc Daily have provided details regarding the efforts to inform readers about the 2014 Farm Bill, particularly with regard to farm program decisions that will have to be made (those articles are available here and here). As the next step in that project, today we introduce the Farm Bill Toolbox as the one-stop resource for farm program decisions, information and analysis, as well as providing further information regarding the ongoing efforts for the Farm Bill.

On July 1, 2014, the University of Illinois as the lead university for the National Coalition for Producer Education (NCPE) entered into a cooperative agreement with the Farm Service Agency for development of web-based decision tools to help producers and farm owners with the decisions and programs in the Farm Bill. This effort will involve the development of three different tools by the Illinois-led NCPE, as well as training, education, outreach and analysis on the tools and programs: (1) a tool for the ARC/PLC program decision, including base acre reallocation, payment yield updating and SCO/STAX; (2) a tool for the new dairy Margin Protection Program and Livestock Gross Margin-Dairy insurance policy; and (3) a tool for the new Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) provisions regarding buy-up coverage.