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SCOTT TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Some farm landowners have a new chance to add base acres to their USDA farm program records.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency said eligible landowners have until Aug. 31, 2026, to review whether their farms qualify for more base acres under the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs.
The programs, better known as ARC and PLC, are farm safety net programs. They can provide payments to producers when crop prices or farm revenues fall.
The change was included in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law July 4, 2025.
The law allows up to 30 million new base acres to be added nationwide.
Base acres are used by USDA to help determine possible ARC and PLC payments. They are not always the same as the acres planted in a given year.
FSA Administrator Bill Beam said this is the first chance to add base acres since 2002.
“These base acre improvements will help strengthen the farm safety net for producers across the country and help them better manage risk,” Beam said.
He said the change should help farms that have grown or changed what they raise since base acres were last updated.
FSA began mailing notices to eligible landowners. Those notices explain that a Base Allocation Summary will be available for review beginning June 1.
Landowners may view the summary online at fsa.usda.gov/arc-plc by using a Login.gov account.
Landowners who do not have a Login.gov account may contact their local FSA county office to get a copy of their summary.
The summary should be reviewed and any needed action completed by Aug. 31, 2026.
USDA officials said landowners and farm operators should talk early in the process, especially when the farm operator has planting records that may help confirm whether the farm qualifies.
To qualify for new base acres, a covered commodity must have been planted, or prevented from being planted, on the farm during the 2019 through 2023 crop years.
The farm’s average planted and prevented planting acres during that time must be higher than the farm’s existing base acres as of Sept. 30, 2024. Unassigned base acres are not counted in that total.
A farm’s total base acres also cannot be higher than its total cropland acres.
If requests from across the country exceed the 30 million-acre limit, USDA will reduce all approved new base acres by the same percentage.
