New Farm Program to provide Enrollment Decisions

The 2014 farm bill is now law and the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) officials are writing rules and regulations to carry out new programs. The five-year farm bill eliminates direct payments, Counter-Cyclical Payments (CCP) and ACRE (Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) programs for commodity crops. Replacing them are some new risk management options that farmers must choose from by FSA farm number.

Crop insurance remains the backbone of the farm financial safety net. It will be augmented by the new farm program. Farmers can invest in their own risk management by buying crop revenue insurance so they are protected annually should a decline in yield and/or a drop in futures price occur.


To protect farmers from multiple year downturns in cash prices or a decline in revenue, the new bill introduces two new programs.  Farmers will choose between a revenue program that covers price and yield losses -- Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and a price-only program known as Price Loss Coverage (PLC). It will be several months before the new USDA farm program sign-up begins – probably next winter.

Crop coverage options
Farmers who choose ARC will have to make another decision of whether to enroll in county ARC on a commodity-by-commodity basis or choose an individual farm ARC that combines all the program commodities on the farm together.

Payments for the county ARC occur when actual county yield times the national marketing price for a commodity is below the ARC revenue guarantee for that crop year. Farm ARC would issue payments depending on whole farm revenue, since program commodities are combined. The program covers losses on 85% of the base acres for the county option and 65% of base acres for farm coverage.

The ARC guarantee provides a range of revenue protection from 76% to 86% of historical revenue, with farmer-purchased crop insurance expected to cover deeper losses. Farmers who enroll in ARC may not buy (Supplemental Coverage Option) SCO insurance beginning in 2015 because they are very similar products.

PLC is a target-price program that makes payments when national average cash crop prices drop below a “reference price” set in the farm bill. The reference prices are: $3.70 per bushel for corn, $8.40 per bushel for soybeans and $5.50 per bushel for wheat. Beginning in 2015, PLC enrollment also allows the purchase of SCO insurance to reduce the traditional crop insurance deductible levels. Only farmers enrolled in the PLC program may buy SCO insurance and county yields are used.

Farmers along with their landowners on rented ground have to make a one-time, irrevocable decision to enroll a farm in ARC or PLC for the life of the five-year farm bill. If a farmer doesn't make a decision, farms are automatically enrolled in PLC beginning in 2015.

To help decide on which program to use, farmers may have to review historical planted acres due to the one-time choice of reallocating base acres using the average for the years 2009 through 2012. However, the reallocation of acres by crop cannot exceed the total historical base acreage. In addition, farmers might want to compare yield information for their farms to their county yields for the years 2008 through 2012.

Payment triggers for both the ARC and PLC programs are based on marketing year average prices. Thus any payments for revenue or price losses won’t be made until the year following a loss.

More information to come
It is too early to know for sure which program will be best for Corn Belt farmers, as the final rules and regulations are not yet known. Once USDA releases the information, farmers and landowners should have time to make enrollment decisions.

A preliminary analysis of the two programs suggests, for 2014, ARC’s price coverage level is more favorable for corn and soybeans while PLC’s reference price is more favorable for other crops such as peanuts, rice, barley and wheat. However, farmers will need to consider how the two programs will work over the life of the five-year farm bill; or through the 2018 crop year.

By Steven D. Johnson, PhD, Farm Management Specialist, Iowa State University Extension & Outreach. Steve Johnson has a Ph.D in Vocational Education from Colorado State University, a M.S. in Agricultural Education/Economics and a B.S. in Agricultural Education from Iowa State University and joined the ISU Extension and Outreach in September 1999.  Steve works primarily with farmers, landowners and other agribusiness managers and consultants.