The FarmDoc team along with others are holding seminars across the state, the listing is provided under the Seminar Series portion on the FarmBill ToolBox homepage or at farmbilltoolbox.farmdoc.illinois.edu/seminar-series.html

The Farm Service Agency provided a letter to land owners and operators about August 1, 2014, which contained current program or Counter-cyclical (CC) yield data, along with historical base acres for 2008 to 2012. If the document cannot be found, ask the FSA office for a duplicate.

County yields can be found in the Quickstats section of the website for the National Agricultural Statistics Service: http://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/

Since a flex lease give you part of the risk of production, you and your tenants will be involved in the decision as to which farm program to choose for the farm's base acres acreage. Your decisions must be unanimous for each FSA farm.

When CRP acreage is released by FSA or exits the CRP contract, the base acres that existed when it was enrolled in the CRP contract return as they were and program yields will be reassigned as they were prior to entry into the CRP program.

The owner of the land owns the base acres and payment yields associated with the land on that FSA farm.

All programs make payments on a percentage of the base acres on the farm, no program makes payments on the actual planted acres. ARC-IC calculations are based on actual and historical farm yields. The actual planted acres on the farm in the crop year are used to weight the revenue numbers in the calculation. In that way, actual yields and planted acres do impact the program and payment calculations for ARC-IC. By comparison, ARC-CO uses actual county average yields and PLC uses the program or payment yields to calculate payments.

When CRP acreage is released by the FSA, base acres are returned as they were prior to entry into the CRP program.

In the base acre reallocation tool, wheat might be the planted crop.  Soybeans would be listed as the subsequent crop, reflecting a second crop on that acreage. If you had a 100 acre wheat base, and a 0 acre soybean base, the calculator reallocates the base (if desired) as 50 acres for wheat and 50 acres for soybeans. Your choice whether to reallocate depends on your expecations for more payment benefits from the wheat and soybean combination than just the wheat base.

As the owner of the land, the landowner also owns the base acres and payment yields associated with the land on that farm. By statute, the owner of the land makes the decisions for base acres and payment yields on those base acres.

Because all programs make payments on base acres, the decision to reallocate should take into consideration the relative values of the base acres (i.e., expected payments) under different program scenarios. Future planting decisions might also impact the decision to reallocate. The decision, however, is for the landowner.

Reallocation is determined by the ratio of planted acres to a program crop compared to the planted acres of all other program crops for the 2009 to 2012 crop years. Because all programs make payments on base acres, the decision to reallocate should take into consideration the relative values of the base acres (i.e. expected payments) under different program scenarios. This decision would likely depend on the value of corn base as compared to the value of the other covered commodities with base acres (and planted 2009 to 2012) on the farm.

All programs make payments on a percentage of the base acres on the farm, no program makes payments on the actual planted acres. ARC-IC calculations are based on actual and historical farm yields. The actual planted acres on the farm in the crop year are used to weight the revenue numbers in the calculation. In that way, actual yields and planted acres do impact the program and payment calculations for ARC-IC. By comparison, ARC-CO uses actual county average yields and PLC uses the program or payment yields to calculate payments.

It would be difficult to specifically answer without entering the data from your FSA letter into the decision aid. But a major element in the decision is what your expectations are for yields and prices in the next five years and the financial needs and risks for your farm.

The legislation was designed to provide risk management support to agriculture by means of a safety net. The PLC alternative has an immediate floor price per commodity and payments are triggered when national average prices are below the fixed price. The ARC-CO support is determined by revenue (national prices and county average yields) using the most recent five years of national average prices and county average yields, dropping each year with the highest and lowest. If prices or revenues fall below the guarantees, payments will be triggered on a percentage of the base acres on the farm.

The PLC references prices are set by statute and become a floor price to assure a producer that program crop prices do not fall further. The ARC revenue guarantee provides a payment should prices in a given year fall below the recent average of prices. One would make a choice based on their expectation of prices and/or yields. The Agricultural Policy Analysis System (APAS) tool uses historical information, forecasted prices and yields (e.g., using trends to forecast county average yields) to forecast expected program payments. Hundreds to thousands of calculations under these simulated outcomes are made and averaged to achieve the expected program payments.

Decisions regarding updating payment yields, reallocating base acres, and selection of a farm program remain with the land, regardless of the owner or operator. Any decisions made prior to the February 27 and March 31 deadlines in 2015 will affect any future owner or operator of that land. Future operators would receive payments based on selections made by prior operators.

You can consult any crop insurance agent for your choice of coverage for either ARC or PLC (Price Loss Coverage). Neither of those programs will serve as risk management for yield loss, and their revenue loss protection would be much less than what a revenue insurance policy might provide. The purpose of a farm program is to provide a financial safety net, and is not a crop insurance product. If your choice of program is PLC, you would be eligible to purchase a Supplimental Coverage Option (SCO) policy that covers the risk from a 14% loss to the level of coverage you typically choose for crop insurance.

Yes, any payment earned from the ARC-CO program is made on 85% of base acres for the crop, whereas any payment under ARC-IC is made on 65% of the total base acres on the farm.

The APAS tool shows an expected payment for the 2014 crop year year as well as averagepayments over the five-year horizon. National average prices and either county or individual yields are used to determine expected payments and how the current crop year compares to the most recent 5 crop years will determine the size of the payments.

APAS simulates many different prices and yields in each year.  The average of those prices will be the expected price entered into APAS.  Historical variability is used to account for the variability around both prices and yields.  This procedure accounts for the fact that prices and yields are not known with certainty

The Bar chart at the very end of the APAS tool under the Safety Net tab shows the user the Probability (Y-Axis) of hitting the corresponding Target Revenue shown below on the X-Axis. The Green Bar is the probability of getting the revenue with ONLY the crops and no gov't programs (Crop Insurance or Commodity PLC/ARC Program). The next three bars are the probability of hitting the target revenue based upon the choices made previously with Crop Insurance and Commodity Program selections.

MPCI is an acronym for Multi-Peril Crop Insurance, the APAS tool needs to know what Crop Insurance the user has to calculate expected payments.

Your crop insurance agent may have some excellent literature. The crop insurance industry also has an educational website at: http://www.cropinsuranceinamerica.org/about-crop-insurance/#

Your crop mix should make sense for your farm, not necessarily to sign-up for an alternative in the farm program. SCO is an insurance policy that covers losses from 86% of the county (yield or revenue) down to the level of insurance coverage you purchase from a crop insurance agent. If you carry 85% coverage, the SCO policy would only cover 1%. If you carry 70% coverage on your crop, SCO would cover 16% of your payment. It is triggered at the county level and is applied to the individual policy's deductible range. Crops for which ARC-CO has been elected and FSA farms for which ARC-IC has been elected are not eligible for SCO. It can only be mixed with PLC but no program crop decision is required for eligibility.

The payment limit is $125,000 per individual (i.e., directly attributed to the actual person). If a spouse is considered actively engaged on the farm, then the payment limitation would be $250,000 or $125,000 per individual. The limit applies across the programs (ARC-CO, ARC-IC and PLC) as well as any marketing loan gains or loan deficiency payments. The total payments are added together and limited in total.