Farm Bill 2019 PLC and ARC-CO Payments

It was just last February that most farmers signed up for the new Farm Bill. It sure did not appear that any payments for corn or soybeans would be earned until COVID-19 hit the United States. Now with the crash in corn and soybean prices it looks like many farmers will receive a PLC payment on corn and an ARC-CO payment for soybeans. The marketing year for the 2019 crop ends on August 31, 2020 so we will not know for sure until then.

Farm Management Analyst Kent Thiesse from Lake Crystal put together a table projecting what the payments may be on corn for farmers that chose the PLC option. Looking at the Marketing Year Average (MYA) price and using your FSA program yield (not your actual yield for 2019) it looks like those farmers will receive a PLC corn payment of around $23 to $28 an acre. If corn prices drop even more before the end of August the payments will increase.

There will likely not be a soybean payment if farmers chose the PLC option. However most farmers chose the ARC-CO option for beans and many counties will earn a payment. In Dodge and Steele Counties the payment would likely be over $40 an acre, Waseca and Faribault Counties the payment appears to be around $30 to $39 an acre. Freeborn $20 to $29 and Goodhue County the payment looks like it will be $19 an acre or less. The USDA will they pay 85 percent of what ever the payment turns out to be.

We will not know for sure what the payments will be until the marketing year is over the end of August. We do know the NASS county yield averages that will be used in the calculation, but will have to wait for the final MYA price.  When we signed up for the new Farm Bill we did not anticipate earning a payment. With what has happened to prices the Farm Bill is a little bit of a safety net that we did not anticipate needing!