Ag Policy Blog

BOONE, Iowa (DTN) -- Farmers expecting Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage (ARC and PLC) payments this fall should not see payment disruptions, while USDA also has the funds available to make annual Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) rental payments, a senior USDA official said Wednesday.

Richard Fordyce, USDA undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, spoke about ARC, PLC and CRP payments in an interview with DTN at the Farm Progress Show. Fordyce said the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) has sufficient funds available for both ARC and PLC payments and CRP rental payments.

"We have the appropriate fund balances in the CCC to (make) both CRP rental payments and ARC and PLC payments," Fordyce said.

ARC and PLC payments for the 2025 crop year would begin going out after Oct. 1. Fordyce said he has not seen definitive estimates for the total payments, but both USDA analysts and outside analysts expect payments to increase significantly from a year ago.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last year increased reference prices and tweaked the formula for the ARC program as well.

Economists at University of Illinois' Farmdoc project corn, wheat and soybeans will combine for $9.66 billion in ARC/PLC payments. In comparison, ARC/PLC payments last year for all commodity crops totaled about $2.6 billion.

-- Corn, $5.38 billion overall. Nationally, corn payments will average $58 per acre, though such averages can range widely by county under the ARC program.

-- Soybeans, $1.54 billion with an average payment nationally at $29 per acre.

-- Wheat, $2.74 billion with an average payment at $47 per acre.

Higher payments also are expected for crops such as cotton, sorghum, rice, barley and canola.

Farmers will receive the higher payment formula for either ARC or PLC regardless of which program they initially enrolled their crops in. The payment limit, which also was boosted in the OBBBA to $155,000, increases to $160,000 for the 2025 crop year because of an inflation adjustment.

"It's going to be significantly more than it was last year," Fordyce said.

Program payments should be released by USDA beginning in early October.

Last year, ARC, PLC and CRP payments were delayed because of issues tied to the federal government shutdown that stretched through October and November. As DTN reported, Congress on Tuesday passed a short-term funding bill that will avoid the potential of a government shutdown until at least Dec. 11.

Fordyce stressed that last year's CRP payment delays were caused by the shutdown rather than a shortage of funds.

"The issue on CRP was not a funding issue," Fordyce said.

Normally, USDA officials begin work around Oct. 1 to align payments and conduct what Fordyce described as a stress test and financial review before payments are released. The shutdown prevented USDA employees from doing that work until the government reopened.

"There was a perception that we either didn't have the funding to make the payments, but it was more of a financial audit," Fordyce said. "When we don't have a shutdown, it always happens right at the beginning of the new fiscal year."

ONE FARMER, ONE FILE

USDA also continues working toward a broader overhaul of how farmers interact with the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Risk Management Agency.

Fordyce said enrollment in Farmers.gov continues to steadily increase, with USDA typically seeing more farmers establish accounts when the department announces program changes or updates.

The larger change, however, is USDA's planned "One Farmer, One File" system, which Fordyce compared to online banking. A farmer eventually would be able to log in and see USDA loan balances and payment dates, conservation contracts awaiting action, expected ARC-County payments and eligibility forms that need to be updated or signed.

"It's going to be a one-stop shop," Fordyce said, adding that farmers would have access to information from RMA, FSA and NRCS through the same system.

ONE ACREAGE REPORT

One of the more complicated pieces of USDA's modernization effort is creating a common acreage-reporting system across FSA, NRCS and RMA, Fordyce explained.

Some of the barriers are not statutory but stem from decades-old policies and differences in how FSA, NRCS and RMA each identify and map farmland. FSA programs requiring acreage reports have long relied on what the agency calls a Common Land Unit, or CLU. NRCS uses a Planning Land Unit, or PLU, while RMA uses another system.

"Just getting over that cultural thing about we can, as a mission area, call a field one thing," Fordyce said, is part of the challenge.

USDA also needs a geospatial mapping platform that can serve multiple purposes -- acreage reporting for FSA programs, conservation planning for NRCS and the official land record used for federal crop insurance.

The differences can be more than bureaucratic terminology.

Fordyce pointed to a hypothetical field that historically has been listed as 52 acres. Precision-agriculture data may show the field actually contains 50.8 acres. RMA has increasingly been able to use the more precise acreage, meaning the producer pays crop-insurance premiums on 50.8 acres rather than 52.

The goal is to have all three agencies working from the same geospatial map.

"It's just more of getting everybody on the same page using this geospatial mapping platform that is a common map that's going to be used across the three agencies," Fordyce said.

USDA also has changed how it is approaching the technology behind acreage reporting.

Fordyce said USDA previously tried to build a new acreage-reporting system that would communicate separately with the department's existing computer systems. Palantir, USDA's new technology partner, instead proposed putting the information into a common data platform and allowing those databases to communicate with the new acreage-reporting system.

"We were doing it the other way, and so it has been a game changer," Fordyce said.

USDA recently tested the modernized acreage-reporting system in Seward County, Nebraska, which Fordyce said has some of the lowest internet bandwidth among FSA county offices nationally.

Despite the limited bandwidth, Fordyce said the new system operated quickly in some county offices known to have poor internet bandwidth. He also pointed to feedback USDA received from an FSA employee with 38 years at the agency who had watched previous technology upgrades come and go.

"I've seen these rollouts before, and they usually end with a thud," Fordyce quoted the employee as saying. "This has been fantastic."

See, "Turning to Technology, USDA Leaders Want Fewer Surprises in Acreage, Yield Estimates," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Also see, "House Passes Funding Bill as Republicans Pressure Trump on Beef Imports," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

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