American farmers have until 11 December to choose between Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) for their 2026 commodity crops, and this year they are deciding with the crop already harvested, DTN farm business editor Chris Clayton reports. PLC pays when prices fall below a trigger; ARC-County pays when county revenue falls below a guarantee built from the past five years' yields and prices.
Price forecasts frame the choice. USDA on Tuesday put the 2026-27 season-average price at $4.60 a bushel for corn, down ten cents from October, $12.10 for soybeans, up ten cents, and $6.20 for wheat, down ten cents. Kansas State's economists are more bearish, at $4.44 for corn, $11.92 for soybeans and $5.93 for wheat; the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute has $4.57, $11.66 and $6.25.
Set against the effective reference prices, wheat has the best chance of a PLC payment. The University of Illinois farmdoc calculator puts the likelihood at 53% for wheat, 29% for corn and 14% for soybeans.
ARC-County is more local. Its benchmark uses a five-year Olympic average, dropping the highest and lowest years, and the guarantee is 90% of benchmark revenue; both programmes pay on 85% of base acres. In farmdoc's examples, a central Illinois county with a 211-bushel corn benchmark has a 54% chance of an ARC-County payment of $44.98 an acre, against a 29% chance of a $19.49 PLC payment. A south-eastern North Dakota county shows a 77% chance of $51.22 an acre on corn and 68% of $25.72 on soybeans. A north-eastern Kansas county has an 81% chance of an ARC-County wheat payment of $38.27 an acre.
ARC-Individual Coverage, which covers all crops on a farm together and is little used, pays on only 65% of base acres, but farmdoc notes it may suit farms with prevented planting, a local loss or yields above the county average.
Every farm must make an election for 2026, even to keep its current programme, or it gets no payment for the year. Farms can also sign multi-year contracts for 2026 to 2031, and landowners need a share interest to enrol. Sign-up is at Farm Service Agency offices or online through farmers.gov. Enrolment for 2027 runs to 15 March 2027, and advisers suggest waiting for futures and crop insurance prices before committing. Decision tools are offered by farmdoc, Kansas State and Texas A&M.
Photo: Bill Whittaker / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: DTN / Progressive Farmer
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