March 15 is the deadline to elect and enroll in the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs for 2021. The two are key parts of the federal government's safety net.
Ag producers who haven't signed a contract or who want to make an election change should contact their U.S. Department of Agriculture Service Center to make an appointment. All signatures of producers, with a share of base acres on a farm, must be submitted before March 15.
Right now, more than 86,000 farms have enrolled, about 86 % of expected participation, according to USDA..
Producers are eligible to enroll farms with base acres for the following commodities: barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium- and short-grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed and wheat.
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Additionally, USDA partnered with universities to offer web-based decision tools:
- Gardner-farmdoc Payment Calculator, the University of Illinois tool that offers farmers the ability to run payment estimates modeling for their farms and counties for ARC-County and PLC.
- ARC and PLC Decision Tool , the Texas A&M tool that allows producers to analyze payment yield updates and expected payments for 2019 and 2020.
For more information, visit farmers.gov/arc-plc .
