Author: Bart Fischer

Authors: Bart L. Fischer, Joe L. Outlaw, Henry L. Bryant, Hank R. Nelson, Natalie G. Stewart, J. Marc Raulston, Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University.

The ARC/PLC election & enrollment for 2026 is now live through December 11. You can access AFPC’s decision tool here.

Earlier this week, USDA announced (link) that the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) election and enrollment period for the 2026 crop year will run from September 16 through December 11, 2026. This typically occurs much earlier in the year, but the process for the 2026 crop year was delayed due to the amount of time it has taken USDA to implement the Working Families Tax Cuts Act (i.e., One Big Beautiful Bill) which added up to 30 million acres of additional base acres across the United States. This delay is a substantial benefit for producers, since the 2026 crop either has been or soon will be harvested across the country, and producers will have a much better sense of what yields will be (which has a significant bearing on the performance of ARC in particular). With that said, both ARC and PLC use marketing year average prices from the 12 months following harvest.  So, while producers may have a clearer sense of what yields will be, the marketing year average price is far from settled. As a result, when they make their election and enrollment decisions over the next 3 months, they must take that uncertainty into account.

                  The Agricultural & Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University has decades of experience in developing decision aids for producers.  We have provided an annual decision tool for ARC and PLC since those programs were first created in the 2014 Farm Bill.  We have once again updated the decision aid for the changes made in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act.  We have also refreshed the tool to make it easier to use. If you’ve used it in the past, your existing data should load once you log in. You can find a link to the tool on our website (link). Before using the tool, it would be helpful to make sure you have access to your base acre and program yield data which can be found on the FSA-156EZ form.

                  The following screen captures provide a general walk-through of the decision tool. You will be prompted to log-in primarily so you don’t have to enter data again each time you visit the tool. Once you are on the Tools and Decision Aids landing page, simply click on “2026 FSA ARC/PLC Expected Payments” (circled in red below).

From that point, you can add as many farms (i.e., FSA Farm Serial Numbers, or FSNs) as needed by clicking on the blue “+ Create a Farm” button. 

Once your farms have been added, simply click “+ Add a crop” to add the covered commodities associated with that farm.

Once you’ve added the crops (i.e., covered commodities) on the farm, click “Analyze.”

At this point, you will be prompted to add Base Acres for that covered commodity on the farm along with the 2026 PLC Payment Yield, the Historically Irrigated Percentage, and the Expected Price. Because the marketing year average price is far from known at this point, you are welcome to click on “View Suggested Prices” which will provide the most recent forecasted price for the marketing year from USDA.  You are also welcome to run the analysis as many times as you want using your own price estimates. Because this tool evaluates PLC versus ARC County (ARC-CO), if you have a very good sense of what the 2026 actual yield for the county will be, you may wish to override our forecasted yield.  You can do that by clicking on “Advanced Settings” and inputting your own county yield estimate.  Once you are finished, simply click “Calculate” and then scroll down for the results.

Once you’ve clicked “Calculate,” the results will display below. As noted in the following figure, the results will include a table of summary statistics (i.e., mean and median expected payments and chance of payment) along with a chart that shows the likelihood of both ARC and PLC across a range of possible payments. Again, you are welcome to run the tool as many times as you want under as many different assumptions/scenarios as you want.

While the decision tool discussed above is for PLC and ARC-CO, we know that some producers will be interested in exploring possible payments under ARC Individual (ARC-IC). We have developed a separate, Excel-based tool that you are welcome to download from the same website (2026 ARC-IC Decision Aid).

Please note that USDA also announced that signup for the 2027 crop year will begin on November 2, 2026, and run through March 15, 2027. We will be providing an updated tool for the 2027 crop year as we get closer to November 2^nd.

Our FREE tools are available for producers nationwide. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out at 979-845-5913 or 1(888)890-5663.

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Recommended citation format: Fischer Bart L., Joe L. Outlaw, Henry L. Bryant, Hank R. Nelson, Natalie Stewart, and J. Marc Raulston. “Making the ARC/PLC Election for the 2026 Crop Year.” Southern Ag Today 6(38.4). September 17, 2026. Permalink

Authors: Bart L. Fischer and Joe Outlaw

In June 2024, we wrote (link) about a novel new concept for adding base acres to farms that had been proposed in the House Ag Committee-passed version of the 2024 Farm Bill (Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024). The concept ultimately was adopted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) that was signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025. As we noted in July 2025 (link), the provision allowed up to 30 million additional base acres across the nation. Over the past year, USDA has been working to implement the provision. On June 1, 2026, USDA began notifying producers about the opportunity to add base acres to farms. The notification includes a “Base Allocation Summary” that provides the farm’s reported acres by covered commodity for any planted, prevented planted, failed, double crop, and subsequent acres (acres planted after an initial commodity)—along with the total number of acres of non-covered commodities—for each year from 2019 to 2023.  While the calculations in the worksheet can be a little confusing to follow, the good news is that the additional base allocation will occur automatically (and can only increase the base acres on your farm—in other words, the additional base allocation cannot take base acres away from you nor reallocate existing base acres).  Since the process is largely automated, you really only have to make some basic decisions by the August 31, 2026, deadline.  Specifically, according to USDA, you should notify your local FSA office if:

• the acreage history data in your Base Allocation Summary is incorrect or missing;
• there are “subsequent acres” listed and you would like to choose the subsequent acreage for base allocation; or
• you elect to opt out of receiving any additional base acres.

It is clear from the implementing rule and the Base Allocation Summary that the additional base allocation process first converts unassigned base acres on an acre-for-acre basis, so long as the converted acres do not exceed the total amount of additional allocation on the farm. To read more on the implications for unassigned base acres, see this February 2026 article by Dr. Amy Hagerman (link). Finally, you will note that the Base Allocation Summary refers to “Potential Allocation” because USDA will have to apply an across-the-board pro-rata reduction if the total calculated additional base acre allocation exceeds 30 million acres. Notably, neither the 30-million-acre limit nor the pro-rata reduction apply to the converted unassigned base acres.

Beyond decisions about the allocation of additional base acres, producers will soon have to make the annual election and enrollment decisions for ARC and PLC for the 2026 crop year.  This decision is typically made in the Spring before most crops are planted, but it has been delayed for the 2026 crop year as USDA has been implementing various provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. USDA has made it clear that they will announce ARC/PLC election/enrollment timeframes once the additional base acre allocation process has been completed. This is beneficial for producers because they will have much more knowledge about how the 2026 crop year is unfolding before having to make the decision. Once USDA announces the election/enrollment timeline, you can utilize the Agricultural & Food Policy Center’s ARC/PLC decision tool (which will be available at this link) to run the latest payment projections.  While you can find a number of ARC and PLC payment projections online, we’d encourage you to use AFPC’s decision tool to compare both ARC and PLC projected payments and to make decisions based on your own level of risk tolerance.  It is also important that you consider any implications for crop insurance as you are making your decisions about ARC and PLC.  

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Authors: Bart L. Fischer and Joe Outlaw

While you will never find us using this platform to attack other regions of the country—as it turns out, we want farmers and ranchers across the entire country to be successful—our colleagues at FarmDoc seemingly never miss a chance to take swipes at Southern agriculture. Typically, their arguments center on some narrow way that federal policy is supposedly disproportionately benefiting producers in the South. We won’t re-plow that ground here, as you can find several other articles where we have taken them to task in response. 

But, in one of the latest FarmDoc articles (The Evolving US Southern Crop Problem), they take a new approach. Carl Zulauf from Ohio State University argues that Southern harvested acres are declining…and suggests that is proof that Southern agriculture is actually being harmed by the farm safety net. Before we go any further, we can’t help but offer a quick lesson on spurious correlation—the idea that two variables can move together mathematically but not be causally connected. A quick Google search will yield all manner of outstanding examples.^[1]  One of our favorites: the popularity of the first name Brooklyn is highly correlated with UFO sightings in Kentucky. Are they correlated? Yes. Are they causally related? Umm….no.

To prove his point, he highlights changing acreage in the South, using cotton, peanuts, and rice as his evidence.  Oops…peanut and rice acreage are actually fairly stable (just look at Zulauf’s Figure 2).  But, not cotton!  He notes that cotton harvested acreage has declined significantly if you look at his random groupings of 1927-1929, 1978-1980, and 2023-2025. Then, if you close your eyes and disengage your brain—and just take at face value his oft-repeated argument that Southern crops have disproportionately benefited from the farm safety net—for him that prompts a “rarely asked question” of whether the support for these crops have hurt Southern crop agriculture in total. We tell our students all the time that there’s no such thing as a dumb question. We may have finally found the exception.  

While we could spill gallons of ink addressing this nonsense, we will simply offer three key observations. In the article, he argues that changes in planted acres are the “ultimate” indicator of crop competitiveness…yet he uses harvested acres in his analysis (alongside his arbitrary grouping of years).  The problem: he fails to acknowledge significant abandonment in cotton acres (i.e., a large divergence between planted and harvested acres) due to prolonged drought over the last few years in the cotton belt that have nothing to do with competitiveness.  

While cotton acres have declined in the group of Southern states used by Zulauf (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia)—with cotton planted acres reaching their low in 1967—they have averaged 9.97 million acres over the 58 years since then (and 10.47 million acres over the last 10 years) as reflected in Figure 1.  So, while Zulauf makes considerable noise over the decline in harvested cotton acres since 1927 (and you can find a number of academic articles that describe the reasons behind that decline through 1967 that are beyond the scope of this article), the reality is that cotton planted acres have been relatively stable for the last 60 years.

Figure 1: Planted Acres of Select Crops in the Southern United States, 1909-1925.

Perhaps more importantly, his article completely ignores the fact that payment acres for Title 1 of the farm safety net have been completely decoupled from production since 1996.  While he and some of his colleagues write incessantly about the amount of support for cotton, peanuts, and rice, the reality is that since Freedom to Farm was implemented in 1996, farmers could plant whatever they want (with some restrictions—largely to prevent overplanting of specialty crops) and remain eligible for the farm safety net.  You see that dynamic playing out as intended in Figure 2.  Over those last 30 years (1996 to 2025), cotton and soybeans have jockeyed for top billing in terms of planted acres in the South.  In fact, in 14 of the last 30 years (or 46% of the time), soybean acreage exceeded cotton acreage.  While corn and wheat have generally jockeyed for the 3^rd and 4^th spots, corn overtook cotton in 2025. In other words, farmers have the freedom to plant what commodity markets are indicating will be their most profitable alternative—and the data indicates they do. Profitability is one of many factors that farmers have to consider when making planting decisions, many of which were discussed in a previous article.

Figure 2: Planted Acres of Select Crops in the Southern United States, 1996-1925.

While we agree that overall planted acres have gone down in the South, we would argue that this has had absolutely nothing to do with the decoupled support provided in Title 1 of the farm bill.  Since the 1970s, we’ve seen a considerable amount of land go into grasslands for conservation (e.g., Conservation Reserve Program) or in support of the cow-calf sector.  We’ve also seen land being used for forestry.  The point: landowners have the freedom to decide how they want to use their land, and they have done so accordingly.  

We save what is perhaps the most egregious point for last.  Zulauf argues that part of the harm being done is that it is “inhibiting diversification.” This seems to be a strange statement from someone who comes from a region that predominantly plants two crops. As noted in Figure 1, at one point in history the South planted 30 million acres of corn. Is that the sort of diversification he’s after…the South should plant more corn? As for other crops that have lost acres, there are a litany of reasons why and none of them have anything to do with ARC and PLC either. As we noted above and as reinforced in Figure 2, Southern growers take a number of factors into consideration when deciding what to plant—none of which are ARC or PLC since they are decoupled from production.

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^[1] https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

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Recommended citation format: Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “FarmDoc Continues to Sow Regional Discord.” Southern Ag Today 6(26.4). June 25, 2026. Permalink

Authors: Bart L. Fischer and Joe L. Outlaw

While the agricultural industry in the U.S. has long relied on trade as a major demand outlet, the agricultural trade deficit ballooned to more than $100 billion in total over the last 4 years, and at the same time, the United States has been experiencing unparalleled growth in export competition. While the current administration is using retaliatory tariffs as a tool to attempt to reset the deck, we increasingly are hearing from various corners that the U.S. cannot trade its way out of the low-price scenario we are facing for row crops.  While we might take a more nuanced view than that assessment, it does beg the question of what the U.S. is doing—and what more could be done—to expand demand here at home for agricultural commodities.

While much of that work falls to the private sector, the Federal government certainly plays a role, including by both directly purchasing products and by providing incentives.  With respect to purchases, the U.S. government has long been a significant buyer of U.S. agricultural commodities.  For example, for more than 200 years, the U.S. government has been purchasing U.S.-grown commodities to donate overseas in the form of emergency food aid.  In addition, the Buy American Act (P.L. 72-428) was signed into law in 1933—a contemporary of the nation’s first farm bill—and required the U.S. government to give preference to U.S.-made products in all its purchases.  As another example, the Berry Amendment is a statutory requirement originally adopted in 1941 “that restricts the Department of Defense (DoD) from using funds appropriated or otherwise available to DoD for procurement of food, clothing, fabrics, fibers, yarns, other made-up textiles, and hand or measuring tools that are not grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States.”^[1]

While government purchases continue to be a significant demand source, the U.S. government has also been doing more to incentivize the private sector to purchase U.S.-grown commodities.  Perhaps the most notable example is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the impact that ethanol has had on the demand for corn and other feedstocks. That debate continues today as Congress considers whether to authorize the sale of year-round E15 and as the details are worked out on 45Z and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).  While we are all familiar with the biofuel examples, there are other examples being introduced in Congress, including the Grown in America Act of 2025 (H.R. 1707) and the Buying American Cotton Act of 2026 (H.R.7230/S.1919).  Both bills are starting to pick up steam with a growing list of co-sponsors.

• The Grown in America Act of 2025 was proposed by the Ag Investment for America Coalition which is made up of a broad cross-section of commodity organizations and domestic food and beverage manufacturers.^[2]  It was introduced in the House in the 119^th Congress by Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN-8) and includes 32 bipartisan co-sponsors (including 4 original sponsors).  The bill aims to expand demand for domestic agricultural commodities and encourage additional investment in domestic supply chains by establishing a tax credit for food and beverage manufacturers that source their raw agricultural inputs from U.S. farmers and ranchers.  The tax credit would be equal to 25% of the value of domestically sourced agricultural commodities used in the production of a food or beverage for human consumption.

• The Buying American Cotton Act of 2026 was proposed by the National Cotton Council.^[3]  It was introduced in the House in the 119^th Congress by Rep. Greg Murphy (R‑NC-3) and includes 70 bipartisan co-sponsors (including 23 original sponsors). It was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R‑MS) and includes 14 bipartisan co-sponsors (including 3 original sponsors), including Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. The bill aims to encourage the consumption of U.S.-grown cotton, including the consumption of products made from such cotton, by establishing a tax credit for retailers.  The tax credit would be equal to 18-24% of the value of the U.S.-grown cotton contained in the article of clothing (with the range depending on whether it was manufactured in a country with whom the United States has a free trade agreement in place).  

These bills have 15 co-sponsors in common, including the support of Rep. G.T. Thompson (R-PA-15), Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture. Between the America First focus of the Trump Administration and a growing bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill post-COVID in bolstering U.S. supply chains, we can envision both bills receiving favorable treatment on Capitol Hill.

Given the growth in export competition, U.S. farmers are going to need all of the domestic solutions they can get to increase prices.  All of the alternatives discussed in this article will do that, and the sooner the better.

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^[1] https://www.trade.gov/berry-amendment

^[2] https://www.aginvestmentforamerica.com

^[3] https://www.cotton.org/news/releases/2026/ncc-on-baca-house-intro.cfm

Bart L. Fischer and Joe Outlaw

The United States has a long and storied history of providing food aid to those who are in need around the world. One of the earliest examples dates to 1812 when the U.S. government sent $50,000 of wheat flour to Venezuela following a devastating earthquake. U.S. international food aid efforts were formalized with passage of the Food for Peace Act in 1954, which sought to alleviate global hunger while also disposing of domestic agricultural surpluses. In total, the U.S. has consistently spent in excess of $4 billion per year on international food aid and is, by far, the world’s largest contributor.^[1] That funding results in more than 1 million metric tons of U.S.-grown agricultural commodities—including corn, sorghum, rice and wheat— being shipped to recipient countries each year, serving as a consistent source of demand and helping to stabilize domestic prices.

Over the last 200 years, policymakers have regularly debated the appropriate role of the U.S. government in providing international food aid.  For example, during Congressional debates in 1847 about whether to send aid in response to the Irish Potato Famine, President Polk threatened a veto, arguing that it was his “solemn conviction…that Congress possesses no power to use public money for any such purpose.”  For decades, policymakers have also debated the appropriate balance between food aid and development assistance—the proverbial “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  Both featured prominently in the development and passage of the Food for Peace Act over 70 years ago, and both remain a prominent feature of American global food security efforts today. 

More recently, the debates over international food aid have been more technical in nature, largely focused on the efficiency of food aid (or the perceived lack thereof) and the impact of that aid on the recipient country.  On the latter, an amendment to the Food for Peace Act from Senator Henry Bellmon (R-OK) in the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1977 required the U.S. government to assesses whether the recipient country has adequate storage facilities and whether assistance would interfere with the recipient country’s agricultural economy before shipping aid. 

Despite these efforts, criticism of in-kind aid (i.e., U.S.-grown commodities) has resulted in a push for procurement of food aid in local/regional markets and for cash transfers for people to use in local shops. In 2010, the Obama Administration introduced a cash-based assistance program known as the Emergency Food Security Program (EFSP) that was designed to complement U.S.-grown commodities by allowing local/regional purchases along with cash transfers. Since then, the use of cash-based assistance has rapidly expanded, now accounting for more than half of international food aid provided by the United States. This has led to growing concerns among policymakers about a lack of accountability with cash-based assistance and the ease with which it can be misappropriated in recipient countries.

This brings us to Spring 2025. As part of their efforts to improve government efficiency and ensure U.S. international efforts are yielding promised results, the Trump Administration eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development which oversaw Food for Peace, absorbing those efforts into the broader State Department. In December 2025, USDA entered into an interagency agreement to take over the administration of Food for Peace.  In March 2026, the Committee on Agriculture in the U.S. House of Representatives marked up its farm bill proposal—the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026—which would permanently transfer the authorities of the Food for Peace Act from USAID to USDA while reserving 50% of Food for Peace resources for U.S. grown commodities, returning the program “to its original intent of addressing the global hunger crisis through the purchase of U.S. grown commodities.”^[2]

For many in the agricultural community, the shift to local/regional procurement and cash-based food assistance—however well intentioned—was undermining the historic mission of Food for Peace. Moving Food for Peace to USDA presents an opportunity to refocus the program, helping ensure that it can survive another 70 years in fulfilling its dual mission of using domestic agricultural surplus to help feed those in need around the world.

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^[1] https://www.gao.gov/international-food-assistance

^[2] https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_2026_ffp_onepager.pdf

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Fischer, Bart L., and Joe Outlaw. “The Future of Food Aid.” Southern Ag Today 6(14.4). April 2, 2026. Permalink