Crop Insurance Today February 2013 - (Page 4)
CropInsuranceTODAY
Acreage Reporting Plan
Common Land Unit
By Troy Brady, NCIS
The objective of this article is to provide a
history of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency’s
(RMA) efforts to convert acreage reporting to a
common land unit (CLU) basis, outlining the requirements and impacts of these efforts for Approved Insurance Providers (AIP), agents and
the insured producer. This article will provide
the definition and examples of a Common Land
Unit, RMA’s efforts to adopt acreage reporting
by CLU, including a brief overview of USDA’s
Acreage and Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI) and its requirements for acreage
reporting by CLU, will be reviewed. The requirements of RMA’s CLU implementation plan
outlined in RMA Informational Memorandum
IS-12-002 will be outlined in detail. An overview
of the resources available to AIPs and agents to
facilitate acreage reporting by CLU as well as
how this new acreage reporting requirement impacts AIPs, agents and insured producers will be
provided. Finally, issues currently impacting
CLU acreage reporting and the industry’s efforts
to address those issues will be covered.
What is a CLU?
In Farm Service Agency (FSA) terminology,
a CLU is an individual contiguous farming parcel, which is the smallest unit of land that has:
1. A permanent, contiguous boundary;
2. Common land cover and land
management;
3. A common owner; and/or,
4. A common producer association.
In simplest terms, it is a field. But it is not
quite that simple. The USDA’s Acreage and Crop
Reporting Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI) defines a CLU as the smallest area of land with the
same land classification and ownership that has
a permanent contiguous boundary. Permanent
4
FEBRUARY2013
boundaries may include field boundaries, fences,
rivers, creeks, grass, waterways, tree and forest
lines or other similar features. While a parcel of
land may have a regular shape to it, that parcel
could in fact be subdivided into multiple CLUs,
with each subdivision of the field representing a
different CLU.
For example, near the center of Figure 1 the
reader can see a square parcel with a tree line dividing it. The acreage north of the tree line contains 37.52 tillable acres in one CLU, the acreage
west of the tree line contains 26.12 tillable acres in
a second CLU, while the acreage to the south of
the tree line contains 77.75 tillable acres in a third
CLU, with the tree line accounting for 15.22 acres
that would be identified as a fourth CLU.
CLU Identification
A CLU is identified by FSA Farm, Tract,
and Field numbers. Since FSA Farm, Tract and
Field numbers are considered Personally Identifying Information (PII) under Section 1619 of
the 2008 Farm Bill, FSA also assigns each CLU
a unique identifier called the CLU ID. The CLU
ID is a globally unique identifier (GUID) that is
system generated. The CLU ID is used primarily by automated systems and generally is not
known by the producer.
In addition, a CLU can be further subdivided,
or contain subfields, that are separated from the
balance of the field by a temporary boundary that
may change from year to year. Subfields may be
established annually and may represent different
commodities or cropping patterns that can be
identified by temporary boundaries. The CLU
subfields will retain the CLU identifier, but a subfield also contains an additional identifier for
each separate subfield within the CLU.
For instance, in the 154.24 acre square CLU in
the upper left-hand corner of Figure 1 the reader
can see two distinct crops planted in each of the
north and south halves of the CLU. The area
planted to the crop in the north half of the CLU
could be identified as subfield 1, while the area
planted to the crop in the south half of the CLU
could be identified as subfield 2.
If subfield 2 was further subdivided into a
third area that was planted to the same crop as
was planted in subfield 1, the northern area in the
CLU could be identified as subfield 1a, the middle subfield could be identified as subfield 2, and
the southern subfield could be identified as subfield 1b since it was planted to the same crop as
subfield 1a. If the acres planted to each crop were
then switched between these subfields in the following crop year, in a rotational planting for example, the numbering of the individual subfields
in the subsequent crop year may not be the same
as the previous crop year, making it difficult to
rely on subfield as a permanent land location
identifier. Because both the location and identification of a subfield can change year-to-year,
acreage reporting by subfield within a CLU is not
currently a requirement of RMA’s CLU acreage
reporting plan.
Figure 2 shows another type of CLU structure for a field irrigated with a center pivot. Some
FSA county offices may identify each of the nonirrigated corners of the field with separate CLUs,
as shown in the two circular fields in the lefthand side of Figure 2. Each of these non-irrigated acres around the circular field are
identified as separate CLUs. Note that the other
two irrigated fields in Figure 2 do not show the
corners in separate CLUs.
Acreage Reporting
by CLU
The requirement for acreage reporting by
CLU began with discussions in 2008 at USDA
with RMA and FSA. Those early discussions
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crop Insurance Today February 2013
Primum Non Nocere-Redux
Common Land Unit Acreage Reporting Plan
A Challenging 2012 for NCIS & the Crop Insurance Industry
NCIS Participates in NAFB "Trade Talk"
The Value of Crop Insurance Case Study
Step 8 -- Managing Constraints
Insurable Crops: Locations & Plans
Crop Insurance Today February 2013
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