Dr. Calvin Trostle, Extension Agronomy, TAMU Dept. of Soil & Crop Sciences, Lubbock, (806) 746-6101, ctrostle@ag.tamu.edu
Last September I noted the process underway to study the potential for guar to be added as a program crop for federal crop insurance. That earlier report is at https://agrilife.org/texasrowcrops/news/page/2/
USDA Risk Management Agency is currently administering a contract with Agralytica, Alexandria, VA to evaluate the feasibility of a guar crop insurance program. This has included face-to-face visits with farmers, documenting perils the crop may face, etc. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension and Oklahoma State Extension are contracted to conduct some limited variety trials in 2021 to provide plant physiological data for the feasibility study. Soon, guar will undergo actuarial modeling to understand projections of how financially stable a program might be.
What is Needed Now from Farmers: Guar Yield Data from Your Farm
The modeling process for feasibility needs more real-world data from guar farmers. This will help establish yield baselines. The yield baseline is important as it must reflect actual field production results. A guar crop insurance program could fail if the yield baseline is set too high or too low.
So, RMA and Agralytica need more farmer data that documents yield history by field. I suggest data since 2002 is acceptable because guar varieties and farming methods have not changed much. A farmer who can provide at least three years of data would be best. This could be one field per year or several fields. Yes, this might take some time to pull out records you have. Because guar is not a program crop there is little data to meet this need on record at FSA offices.
There is no need to select which year you pick. Poor yields and good yields are needed to generate information on the range of field results.
To submit your yield data, you can:
- Work with me to get that in the proper format for submitting to Agralytica.
- Work directly with Agralytica to submit your data. Contact Agralytica president Mr. Andre Williamson, awilliamson@agralytica.com, office (703) 739-9090, ext. 121.
My goal is to get 22 farmers total to provide data for at least 60 site-years. (One site-year is a field in one year.) I would like to see eight farmers from the Texas South Plains (including two that can supply irrigated data), twelve from the Rolling Plains, and two from southwest Oklahoma.
If you have questions and would like to work with Texas A&M AgriLife to gather the data, please contact me to discuss further.
Since the process of possible federal crop insurance for guar started in September 2018, each outcome we hoped for at each step has been favorable. The next goal is a three-year pilot guar crop insurance test program for Texas and Oklahoma potentially beginning 2022.
If you would like to discuss your guar production contact Dr. Trostle. For more information on guar production resources for Texas view https://lubbock.tamu.edu/programs/crops/other-field-crops/guar/