With the announcement that growers can sign up for the 2026 Farm Bill, I’ve received a few questions this past week. I don’t know if some of you are interested in trying to sign up during this rainy period or if you’d prefer to wait till closer to the December 11^th deadline.

The blessing in this later signup is the ability to look back and have more information. By waiting to see how yields look in a county and in learning more about price, it can give indication how these factors may impact ARC-CO vs. PLC. However, it is important to make a decision prior to December to help the FSA Offices out with their work load. For those wishing to sign up now vs. waiting, there are pretty good indications on directions by using the Ag Manager spreadsheet from K-State at:  https://www.agmanager.info/ag-policy/farm-bill-0/tradeoff-between-20262027-arc-and-plc. When you download the spreadsheet from this site, be sure to put in your state, county, and either Irrigated or Non-Irrigated. If you select “All”, that only works in counties without much percentage of either irrigated or non-irrigated acres. If no numbers appear in the chart, you need to select either irrigated or non-irrigated.

In general as of this moment, looking only at price and barring a major reduction in price or county yields dropping off, ARC-CO looks best for corn and soybean. PLC looks best for wheat and either program would work for milo (but ARC-CO in general provides greater support).

For corn, the PLC reference price is $4.42 with the ARC-CO effective price at $4.53; so, ARC-CO would trigger the soonest at county average yields and have a higher paid price compared to PLC unless the market year average price would tank to $3.62, in which PLC would pay more regardless of county average yields. Currently, the market year average (MYA) price is $4.80. So, for ARC-CO to trigger, county average yields would need to decrease or the MYA price would need to decrease to $4.42.

For soybean, the PLC reference price is $10.71 with the ARC-CO effective price at $10.95. It’s most likely that there will be no payment from soybean with the current MYA price at $12.00 unless county level yields or MYA price tanks. However, ARC-CO will trigger sooner than PLC for corn.

For sorghum, both ARC-CO and PLC are options to consider. The PLC reference price is $4.67 with the ARC-CO effective price at $4.77. With the MYA price currently at $4.60, both programs will currently provide price support. ARC-CO provides greater price support early but maxes out sooner and PLC can provide greater price support in the event that prices tank further (at $3.80).

For wheat, the PLC reference price is $6.35 while the ARC-CO effective price is $6.28. With the current MYA price at $6.40, PLC actually triggers and provides price support sooner than ARC-CO at current county average yields. If county average yields for wheat are lower (which most likely they are for much of the State), then ARC-CO provides greater price support than PLC. Both ARC-CO and PLC are fairly even as one looks at the charts, so asking your county FSA office for the county wheat yield for 2026 will help you in making the decision for wheat acres.

No one can predict what market year average prices and county yields will do, but the following information is provided to hopefully help you better understand the tradeoffs in making the decisions on the base acres you have. UNL will be providing Farm Bill Update webinars and meetings beginning in October, so please be watching for announcements on those events from https://cap.unl.edu and https://cropwatch.unl.edu. Taking a few moments playing with the spreadsheet I mentioned above from K-State is also incredibly helpful to see how price and yields impact the farm bill program decisions. That spreadsheet is what I’ve used to help share information on the Farm Bill all these years – so searching for it from K-State can be of help to you in the future. Here’s wishing you the best as you make these upcoming decisions!