Farmers Might Get to Reallocate Base Acres

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday that farmers might be able to reallocate their planting history, known as base acres, at Farm Service Agency offices by this fall and that money for helping farmers make signup decisions will go to universities and educators by the end of this month, according to agriculture.com.

“It’s our hope that by the fall, folks will be able to make appropriate adjustments to their acres and production,” Vilsack said during a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on the implementation of the 2014 Farm Bill, known as the Agricultural Act of 2014.

The new farm law will allow farmers to change their base acres to reflect more recent planting decisions, as well as allow them to report more recent yields. Both of the farm bill’s major new commodity programs, a revenue program called Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC), and a target price program called Price Loss Coverage (PLC), will make payments tied to a farm’s historical base acres, not the acres actually planted to crops. Updated yields would be used to determine any PLC payments a farm might receive if prices fall enough to trigger the program. They would not be used in calculating any payments made under the ARC program.

Making changes in either base acres or yields is optional and not required for enrolling in the new programs.