I took that option to update my bases. It was my only way back in. I opted out of Freedom to Farm and figured I better learn to go it alone since the payments were going to decline/end. Imagine being on the outside when prices tanked and finding out there were LDP's being paid on corn and the payments were not going away and I was locked out of both. Made for some tight times so when they came out with the next bill I opted back in but to get back the best option was to update bases. I ran the spreadsheet from Texas A&M  that compare scenarios and it showed that updating would really pay off in countercyclical payments were made. That spreadsheet was very accurate within a few dollars of the final signup numbers.

I had to prove planted acreages and actual yields. We had always continued reporting planted acreage even outside of the program and fortunately I had segregated records backed by scale tickets on a farm by farm basis to prove production.

Everyone I talked to said I was nuts but it was my only real choice and the opportunity to finally update bases was a rare event I knew I needed to take advantage of.

Here is the documentation I put together, picture was dated 2/10/03

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P2100019 (Medium).JPG (67KB - 35 downloads)