U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on June 15 that producers may now enroll in the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs for 2014 and 2015.
The programs were initially created by the 2014 Farm Bill, designed to protect agricultural producers from market variations. To date, approximately 1.7 million farmers have elected for ARC or PLC.
“We worked with universities to simplify these complex programs by providing online tools so producers could explore how program election options would affect their operation in different market conditions; these tools were presented to almost 3,000 organizations across the country,” said Vilsack. “The Farm Service Agency also sent more than 5 million educational notices to producers nationwide and participated in over 4,880 educational events with more than 447,000 attendees.”
On March 27, Vilsack stated that farm owners and producers would have additional time to choose between ARC and PLC coverage. At the time, professionals needed to make a choice, or they risked forfeiting 2014 crop year payments.
Some commodities that are covered under ARC and PLC include wheat, corn, rice, canola, barley, chickpeas, lentils, mustard seed, oats and peanuts. Upland cotton is no longer covered under either program.
About 96 percent of soybean farms, 91 percent of corn farms and 66 percent of wheat farms have chosen to participate in the ARC program. A total of 99 percent of long grain rice farms, 99 percent of peanut farms and 94 percent of medium grain rice farms have elected the PLC program.