By Bart L. Fischer and Joe L. Outlaw et.al
The ARC/PLC election & enrollment for 2026 is now live through December 11. You can access AFPC’s decision tool here.
Earlier this week, USDA announced (link) that the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) election and enrollment period for the 2026 crop year will run from September 16 through December 11, 2026. This typically occurs much earlier in the year, but the process for the 2026 crop year was delayed due to the amount of time it has taken USDA to implement the Working Families Tax Cuts Act (i.e., One Big Beautiful Bill) which added up to 30 million acres of additional base acres across the United States. This delay is a substantial benefit for producers, since the 2026 crop either has been or soon will be harvested across the country, and producers will have a much better sense of what yields will be (which has a significant bearing on the performance of ARC in particular). With that said, both ARC and PLC use marketing year average prices from the 12 months following harvest. So, while producers may have a clearer sense of what yields will be, the marketing year average price is far from settled. As a result, when they make their election and enrollment decisions over the next 3 months, they must take that uncertainty into account.
The Agricultural & Food Policy Center (AFPC) at Texas A&M University has decades of experience in developing decision aids for producers. We have provided an annual decision tool for ARC and PLC since those programs were first created in the 2014 Farm Bill. We have once again updated the decision aid for the changes made in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. We have also refreshed the tool to make it easier to use. If you’ve used it in the past, your existing data should load once you log in. You can find a link to the tool on our website (link). Before using the tool, it would be helpful to make sure you have access to your base acre and program yield data which can be found on the FSA-156EZ form.
The following screen captures provide a general walk-through of the decision tool. You will be prompted to log-in primarily so you don’t have to enter data again each time you visit the tool. Once you are on the Tools and Decision Aids landing page, simply click on “2026 FSA ARC/PLC Expected Payments” (circled in red below).
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