Only two months remain to enroll in the 2019 Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs.

The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized and updated the ARC and PLC programs. ARC provides income support on base acres when crop revenue declines below certain levels. PLC provides income support on base acres when the price for a covered commodity falls below certain levels.

Producers with base acres on their farms will need to pick which program to enroll each of their base crops into before the 2019 sign-up deadline of March 15.

If a 2019 ARC-PLC election is not made by the March 15 deadline, the farm will not be eligible for any 2019 payments. It is critical to make sure that you get all farms enrolled by the deadline.

Sign-up for the 2019 and 2020 crop years is open at all Farm Service Agency offices across Missouri. All producers with an interest in the open acreage on the farm for 2019 need to agree on which program or programs to enroll the farm’s base crops in for 2019.

This includes producers who have an interest in the hay or pasture acreage on the farm who may not have previously needed to sign ARC-PLC contracts.

Whatever programs are elected for 2019 will be carried forward to 2020, even if the producers on the farm are different. For the 2021-23 crop years, program elections can be changed each year.

The 2018 Farm Bill also gives producers a one-time chance to update their PLC yields. These yields are used in the payment calculation when PLC payments are triggered. The years that are being used to update yields are 2013-17.

Producers who would like to update their PLC yields should get their yield data together for those years, by farm, and certify their yields at the FSA office by Sept. 30, 2020.

The University of Missouri Extension is holding a producer meeting discussing the 2018 Farm Bill, including the ARC-PLC program sign-up, that is aimed at helping producers make these decisions. Check with your local FSA office for more information.

Source: The Missouri Farm Service Agency, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.