FSA base acres are the Farm Service Agency’s record of what your farm historically grew, and they set how much federal support that land can draw under the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs. They don’t track what’s in the ground this season. A farm with 200 base acres of corn holds those 200 acres of corn base whether this year’s field is corn, soybeans, sunflowers, or bare dirt. Payments follow the historical record, not the current crop.
That disconnect is deliberate. Tying payments to history rather than current planting keeps farmers from chasing a program signal instead of the market. Base acres stay attached to the farm through ownership changes, lease turnover, and rotation shifts. They’re a permanent attribute of the farm number in FSA’s database.
Which Crops Can Generate Base Acres
Only the 22 “covered commodities” defined by federal law can carry base acres or trigger ARC and PLC payments.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 7 USC 9011 – Definitions The list includes wheat, corn, soybeans, grain sorghum, oats, barley, the rice classes (long grain, medium and short grain, temperate japonica), seed cotton, dry peas, lentils, large and small chickpeas, and peanuts. It also covers the oilseeds: sunflower, canola, flaxseed, mustard seed, rapeseed, safflower, crambe, and sesame.2Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage Crops outside that list can’t build base or draw payments, no matter how long you’ve grown them.
How Base Acres Translate Into ARC and PLC Payments
You choose one program per commodity per farm, and the choice sticks for the contract period. For the 2026 crop year, every farm has to make a fresh election; skipping the election defaults the farm to its 2025 choice and makes it ineligible for a 2026 payment.3Farm Service Agency. ARC and PLC Program Provisions
Price Loss Coverage
PLC pays when a commodity’s effective price falls below its statutory reference price. The effective price is whichever is higher: the national marketing-year average or the national loan rate. The formula is:
Payment = (reference price − effective price) × PLC yield × 85% of base acres.2Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage
Corn’s statutory reference price is $3.70 per bushel. Only 85% of your base counts toward the payment, but the payment arrives regardless of what you planted or harvested.
Agricultural Risk Coverage – County
ARC-CO covers revenue shortfalls rather than price alone. It pays when actual county revenue falls below the ARC-CO guarantee, which is 90% of the county’s benchmark revenue (an Olympic average of the prior five years).2Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage Payments are again calculated on 85% of your base, and the per-acre payment is capped at 10% of the benchmark revenue.
The 2026 Base Acre Expansion
Starting with the 2026 crop year, FSA is allocating up to 30 million additional base acres nationwide. This is the first large-scale base expansion in years, and farms that have been planting covered commodities without matching base may finally get credit for that history.4Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage Program Handbook
Your farm qualifies for new base if the five-year average of your planted acreage from 2019 through 2023 (including prevented-planted acres caused by drought, flood, or other natural disasters) exceeds your 2024 base acres. The calculation also picks up a share of acreage planted to non-covered commodities, capped at the lesser of 15% of your effective cropland plus CRP acres, or your five-year average of non-covered plantings.4Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage Program Handbook
If total eligible acres nationwide exceed the 30-million-acre cap, FSA applies a proportional reduction across the board. New base is distributed among covered commodities using your 2019–2023 planting ratios. A farm that doesn’t qualify keeps its existing base unchanged. If you disagree with an ineligibility determination, you have 30 calendar days from receiving the notice to file a written appeal with the County Committee.5eCFR. 7 CFR Part 1412 Subpart B – Establishment of Base Acres for a Farm for Covered Commodities
Payment Caps and Eligibility Rules
Base acres set your ceiling, but three rules can pull the actual payment well below it.
- Annual payment limit. For the 2026 crop year, no person or legal entity can receive more than $164,000 in combined ARC and PLC payments for covered commodities other than peanuts. A separate $164,000 limit applies to peanuts. Both caps are now indexed to inflation.6Federal Register. Changes to ARC and PLC Payment Limits
- Adjusted gross income. If your average AGI over the three tax years before the most recently completed tax year exceeds $900,000, you’re ineligible.7eCFR. 7 CFR Part 1400 – Payment Limitation and Payment Eligibility
- Actively engaged in farming. Everyone receiving payments must contribute meaningful land, capital, equipment, labor, or management. Passive owners who contribute nothing else don’t qualify.8Farm Service Agency. Actively Engaged in Farming
You also need conservation compliance. Signing Form AD-1026 certifies you won’t crop highly erodible land without an approved plan and won’t convert wetlands for crop production.9Farm Service Agency. Conservation Compliance Violations cascade across USDA programs, not just ARC and PLC.
Keeping Base Acres Current
Base acres aren’t fully passive. Each year you file an acreage report on Form FSA-578 certifying what you planted, what failed, and what stayed idle.10Farm Service Agency. FSA-578 Report of Acreage Deadlines vary by crop and county, but July 15 is the major date for most crops.11Farmers.gov. Crop Acreage Reporting Information Prevented-planted and failed acres generally must be reported within 15 days of the disaster event. Late filings trigger a measurement-service fee and the County Committee won’t waive missed deadlines for ordinary reasons like forgetting.12Farm Service Agency. Acreage and Compliance Determinations
Yield Updates
When new farm legislation opens the door, producers get a window to update PLC payment yields. The most recent opportunity used 90% of the average yield per planted acre for 2013–2017, with a national-trend adjustment factor.13eCFR. 7 CFR Part 1412 – Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage You’ll need verifiable records like warehouse receipts or settlement sheets. These windows close.
What You Can Plant on Base Acres
Almost anything. Corn base can grow soybeans, wheat, a cover crop, or sit fallow, and your ARC or PLC eligibility rides through untouched. The main exception is fruits, vegetables, and wild rice. Planting those on base triggers an acre-for-acre reduction in your payment acres for that year.14Farm Service Agency. Fruit, Vegetable, and Wild Rice Provisions Forty acres of tomatoes on base drops your payment acres by forty.
Double cropping has its own carve-out. If your county is designated by the Commodity Credit Corporation as an approved double-cropping region and you plant and harvest a covered commodity followed by fruits or vegetables within a 12-month cycle, the payment reduction doesn’t apply.15Farm Service Agency. ARC and PLC Program Provisions Both crops must actually be harvested, and the rotation must plausibly repeat under normal conditions. Your local FSA office can tell you whether your county is on the list.
What Happens When Land Changes Hands
When a farm is sold, inherited, or divided, FSA reconstitutes the farm record and redistributes base acres among the resulting tracts. Federal regulations set four methods in order of precedence: estate (by will, or by written agreement of all heirs if there’s no will), landowner designation (a written buyer–seller agreement, generally unavailable if the land was owned less than three years), cropland proportion (base divided in the same ratio as cropland), and default separation (each tract keeps what it started with).16eCFR. 7 CFR Part 718 Subpart C – Reconstitution of Farms, Allotments, Quotas, and Base Acres All of it is documented on Form FSA-156EZ.17Farm Service Agency. Farm Records and Reconstitutions for Current Year
If you’re buying farmland partly for the base acres, verify the reconstitution method before closing. The three-year ownership rule on landowner designation catches a lot of buyers off guard.
Ownership changes or a change in the list of producers also cancel any existing multi-year ARC/PLC contract. New owners or operators enroll annually going forward.18Federal Register. Changes to Agriculture Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage, and Dairy Margin Coverage Programs FSA will disclose the existing election status on request, but won’t reach out to tell you. Ask.
CRP Expiration and Base Acre Restoration
Land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program has its base acres set aside for the life of the contract. When the contract expires or is terminated, the base can be restored so the acres are eligible for ARC or PLC again.
Restoration has to be completed by August 1 of the fiscal year in which the CRP contract ended, or by another date FSA announces.19eCFR. 7 CFR 1412.23 – Base Acres Miss the window and the base may not carry forward. In the transition year, you pick between a prorated CRP payment and ARC/PLC on those acres; you can’t collect both. Farms coming out of CRP with zero base going into the adjustment get 30 days after notice of the restored base to make a new ARC or PLC election before enrolling.
How Base Acres Can Be Permanently Lost
Converting cropland to non-agricultural use permanently reduces base acres, and the reduction can’t be reversed. Disqualifying uses include golf courses, commercial developments, parking lots, strip mines, solar arrays, wind turbine pad sites, residential subdivisions, and land used primarily for hunting.4Farm Service Agency. Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage Program Handbook Even permanent agricultural structures like grain bins count. If the conversion happens before September 30 of the fiscal year, the owner must complete Form CCC-505 within 30 calendar days to reduce the applicable base. If the County Committee finds you failed to report a conversion, it will reduce the base itself and open a look at whether the farm’s status was misrepresented.
Voluntary reductions on CCC-505 are also available anytime, and they are equally permanent. There is no mechanism to add those acres back later.
Landlord and Tenant Shares
When rented land carries base acres, ARC and PLC payments must be divided in a “fair and equitable” manner, agreed to by all producers and approved by the County Committee.20eCFR. 7 CFR 1412.54 – Sharing of Payments On a share lease, neither landlord nor tenant can take 100%. Everyone with a share, including sharecroppers, signs the contract and the payment split.
Lease type controls the analysis. A guaranteed cash payment or fixed quantity of crop is a cash lease. A lease that depends on actual production or sale proceeds is a share lease. FSA may ask to see the written lease; if the agreement is only oral, you’ll need to provide a full written description of the terms. If a civil dispute breaks out between landlord and tenant that could affect eligibility, FSA can freeze payments until it resolves. Neither side collects while the money sits.
Appealing a Base Acre Determination
Base acre records aren’t error-proof. Wrong planting history, missed allocations, and county-office data entry mistakes all happen. If you receive an adverse determination on your base, you have 30 calendar days from the date the notice reaches you to file a written request for review with the County Committee.5eCFR. 7 CFR Part 1412 Subpart B – Establishment of Base Acres for a Farm for Covered Commodities That window is firm.
An unfavorable County Committee decision can be pushed up to the FSA State Committee or the National Appeals Division, and mediation is also available. Every base acre translates directly into payment eligibility that persists for years, so a paperwork dispute over 50 acres of corn base can be worth thousands of dollars annually in foregone PLC or ARC payments. Appeals are worth pursuing when real acreage is at stake.