Corn & SoyWheatCottonSpecialty
FSA opens 2026 ARC and PLC enrollment through Dec. 11; new base acres trimmed 3.69% to fit 30 million cap
Enrollment for the 2026 crop year opened Sept. 16, and farms that miss the Dec. 11 deadline get no 2026 payment. USDA's September price forecasts now put every major program crop except long-grain rice above its statutory reference price.
Every new base acre USDA adds this fall comes out 3.69% smaller than the number on the landowner’s summary. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) said on Sept. 15 that eligible acres had topped the 30 million acre cap in the 2025 reconciliation law, and it opened Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) enrollment for the 2026 crop year the next day, with a Dec. 11 deadline[1, 2].
Farms that miss that date keep their 2025 program choice on paper. They get no 2026 payment[1].
The details: what FSA announced
The release sets two windows. Elections and enrollment for the 2026 crop year run from Sept. 16 through Dec. 11, 2026. The 2027 window runs from Nov. 2, 2026, through March 15, 2027[1].
The base acre step is finished. Landowners had until Aug. 31 to correct their Base Allocation Summaries, designate subsequent acres or opt out, and any summary left unchallenged is treated as accurate and complete[1]. FSA says no landowner lost existing base in the process[1]. Base allocation notifications became available on Sept. 16 at fsa.usda.gov/arc-plc for landowners with a Login.gov account; others can get theirs from the county office[1].
The cut follows the statute. Section 10302 of Pub. L. 119-21 says that if allocations would exceed 30 million acres, USDA “shall apply an across-the-board, pro-rata reduction” so the total equals the cap[2]. FSA has not published the national total, but a 3.69% cut implies eligible acres of roughly 31.1 million, by this column’s arithmetic. That is well under the 38.7 million acre indicator that University of Illinois and Ohio State economists calculated in July 2025, which would have meant keeping only 77.49% of eligible acres[6]. Commodity Hill’s July report on the Aug. 31 review deadline laid out how eligibility was counted.
In practice, a summary showing 200 potential new acres becomes about 192.6 allocated acres[1]. For PLC, the new acres carry the farm’s existing payment yield for that crop, or the county average yield where the farm has none[2].
How does ARC and PLC enrollment work for 2026?
Changing programs is optional. Signing a contract is not: producers “must enroll through a signed contract each year,” FSA says[1]. The multi-year contracts many farms signed earlier ended with the 2025 crop. Producers can sign a new one covering 2026 through 2031, or opt out and enroll for 2027 during the November-to-March window[1].
On a missed deadline, the release is blunt: the election “remains the same as their 2025 election for crops on the farm, and the farm is ineligible for payments for the 2026 program year”[1]. A landowner without a share interest in the farm cannot enroll[1].
The choices are the familiar three. ARC-County and PLC protect crop by crop; ARC-Individual covers the whole farm[1]. The reconciliation law changed what each pays:
- ARC. The guarantee is 90% of benchmark revenue for the 2025 through 2031 crops, and the maximum payment is 12% of benchmark revenue, up from 10%[2].
- PLC. Reference prices rose from the 2025 crop on, to $4.10 per bushel for corn, $10.00 for soybeans, $6.35 for wheat and $4.40 for grain sorghum, among others[2].
- Payment limit. The per-person cap rose from $125,000 to $155,000, adjusted for inflation each year from 2025[2].
The 2025 crop is the exception to the election. For that year only, the law pays each crop the higher of PLC or ARC-County[2]. University of Illinois economists Jonathan Coppess and Carl Zulauf wrote on Sept. 3 that those 2025 payments are scheduled for October, and that both programs pay on 85% of enrolled base acres[5]. From 2026 on, a farm is paid only from the program it picks[5].
The covered commodity list runs from barley, canola and chickpeas through seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed and wheat[1].
What the election means for crop insurance
Producers who elect ARC can now buy the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO), which was off-limits on the same acres before. The law struck that restriction, and FSA says SCO and the Enhanced Coverage Option are available regardless of the program election[1, 2]. Cotton has a catch. Upland cotton growers who enroll seed cotton base in ARC or PLC cannot use the Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) on that farm’s planted cotton[1].
In the field: September prices against the reference prices
The election window opened five days after USDA’s Sept. 11 supply and demand report raised most price forecasts[3]. In August’s report, wheat, sorghum and long-grain rice all projected below their statutory reference prices. A month later, only rice does[2, 3].
| Crop | Statutory reference price | Aug. forecast, 2026/27 | Sept. forecast, 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corn ($/bu) | $4.10 | $4.50 | $4.80 |
| Soybeans ($/bu) | $10.00 | $11.40 | $12.00 |
| Wheat ($/bu) | $6.35 | $6.20 | $6.40 |
| Sorghum ($/bu) | $4.40 | $4.30 | $4.60 |
| Barley ($/bu) | $5.45 | $5.60 | $5.70 |
| Oats ($/bu) | $2.65 | $3.35 | $3.35 |
| Long-grain rice ($/cwt) | $16.90 | $13.50 | $13.50 |
Sources: reference prices from Pub. L. 119-21[2]; forecasts from WASDE-675[3].
Wheat. USDA raised the season-average farm price 20 cents to $6.40, citing prices reported so far and “increased U.S. corn prices”[3]. That puts the forecast a nickel over the statutory reference price, close enough that a few cents of drift in either direction changes the PLC math.
Corn and sorghum. The corn yield fell 2.2 bushels to 178.5 bushels an acre and production to 15.8 billion bushels, while the price forecast rose 30 cents[3]. Sorghum moved from 10 cents under its reference price to 20 cents over[2, 3]. Where county yields came in short, ARC-County is the program to model, because it pays on revenue, not price alone.
Rice. Long-grain production was cut 3.2 million hundredweight to 103.5 million, and the price forecast held at $13.50, $3.40 under the $16.90 reference price[2, 3]. Southern long-grain growers face the widest gap of any program crop in the report.
Cotton and peanuts. WASDE does not forecast seed cotton or peanut prices. It raised its upland cotton lint forecast to 78 cents a pound from 75 cents[3]. For cotton farms the STAX trade-off belongs in the same conversation as the ARC-or-PLC choice[1].
Bart Fischer, Joe Outlaw and their Texas A&M colleagues at the Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) see the late window as useful. Because much of the crop is harvested, producers “will have a much better sense of what yields will be,” which matters most for ARC, they wrote on Sept. 17[4]. Prices are another matter: both programs use marketing-year averages from the 12 months after harvest, and that average “is far from settled”[4]. AFPC’s free decision tool asks for base acres, PLC payment yield and irrigated percentage, all of which appear on the FSA-156EZ form[4].
On the Hill
None of this needs a vote. The reconciliation law, signed July 4, 2025, extended ARC and PLC through the 2031 crop year[2]. The separate one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill expires Sept. 30, 2026, but it says that where a later law set a later date for an authority, including title I of Pub. L. 119-21, the later date controls[7]. On the statute’s face, the Sept. 30 date does not end ARC or PLC.
The farm bill itself is still moving. On Sept. 16 the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ordered favorably reported an original bill titled the “Agricultural Act of 2026”[8].
Views on the base acre expansion differ. USDA Under Secretary Richard Fordyce said the administration is “providing increased access to the farm safety net,” and pointed to the chance for farmers “to change their program election”[1]. Coppess and Zulauf, writing two weeks before the Senate committee vote, said “nagging concerns with the design of farm payment policies remain.” They noted that “millions of base acres are likely receiving payments based on crops planted 30 or more years ago”[5]. Their hypothetical update to 2021-2025 plantings would add over 32 million soybean base acres and fewer than 1 million for corn, while other crops would lose base[5]. They also judged congressional action this Congress “increasingly unlikely”[5].
What to watch
- October: 2025 ARC and PLC payments, on the higher-of basis, are expected, according to the University of Illinois economists[5].
- Nov. 2: 2027 crop year enrollment opens[1].
- Dec. 11: last day to elect and enroll for 2026[1].
- March 15, 2027: 2027 enrollment closes[1].
FSA still has not said how many acres landowners claimed before the cut, or how the 30 million new acres split among corn, soybeans, wheat and the other covered crops.