ARC-CO Payments In October

We now have a pretty good idea what the ARC-CO payments will be for those farmers that are enrolled in the current Farm Bill. There will not be any ARC-CO payments for soybeans but many farmers will receive a payment for corn. ARC-CO payments are calculated by using the national price level and each county yield for the year compared to the 5 year benchmark average national price for the crop and the 5 year benchmark yield.

It gets extremely complicated so I am grateful for AG Analysts like Kent Thiesse that study these programs and then can explain it to the rest of us. Kent writes a weekly column called FOCUS ON AG. In last week's column Kent wrote about the ARC-CO payments farmers can expect this fall. Because ARC-CO payments are based on what your county yield was for a given year, we can see big differences in what  neighboring  county payments are.

The ARC-CO payment for Rice County is projected to be $52 per corn base acre while Steele County is $24. Right to the West in Le Sueur county the payment is projected to be $2 an acre. If you are like me you are looking for your county and what the projected payment will be. Thanks to Kent Thhiesse here are some other counties in Southern and Southeaster Minnesota.

Blue Earth is $66, Dodge $68, Faribault $19, Freeborn $49, Goodhue $67, Mower $35, Olmsted $68, Wabasha $24, Waseca $30. These projected payments do include the likely 6.8 percent Federal sequestration reduction. These projected ARC-CO payments could change a bit by the end the end of this month but they do give you a pretty good idea for what your payment will be. The payments will be made in October. Again thanks to Ag Analyst Kent Thiesse for calculating all these numbers!