Ag Policy Blog

ARC, PLC, SCO and NCAA Tourney Picks

Chris Clayton
By  Chris Clayton , DTN Ag Policy Editor
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I keep spanning the internet to bring you a constant variety of reports about ARC-PLC and SCO.

farmdocdaily had a report Tuesday from Ohio State University's Carl Zulauf and University of Illinois' Gary Schnitkey. It's good to see those Big Ten schools getting along so well. (For the record, for some reason I picked Dayton over The Ohio State U in my NCAA bracket. The Illini are hanging with Mizzou in the NIT, which is depressing)

Zulauf and Schnitkey compared some of the differences between the decisions farmers will have to make on Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage in the 2014 farm bill to the decisions made in signing up for ACRE or the Direct and Counter-Cyclical programs.

ARC is a revenue program, comparable to ACRE but drills down to the county level, or even the individual level for the whole farm.

PLC is comparable to the counter-cyclical program.

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In choosing ACRE in 2008, farmers had to give up 20% of their direct payments. Under ARC, farmers give up the option of buying the new crop insurance program -- Supplemental Coverage Option.

Also, under ACRE, if you didn't sign up for it in 2008, you had the option to enroll in it every year after. This time around, the decision to sign up a commodity between ARC and PLC is irrevocable.

http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/…

Farmers will choose between ARC and PLC sometime late in the calendar year. Expect announcements to reallocate base acres and update yield data likely before USDA announces a program signup.

At Kansas State University, -- I had to go with Kentucky. Big 12 rivalries die hard. -- Art Barnaby looks at the math of possible Supplemental Coverage Option payouts. Keep in mind that SCO will not be available until the 2015 crop year. Barnaby has a webinar on SCO planned in early April.

http://www.agmanager.info/…

While these ARC-PLC-SCO decisions are critical, they remain a long way off. One key to all of these decisions, however, will be walking landlords through the various options because they will likely have to sign off on these decisions much like they did with ACRE.

However, the NCAA tournament is here. My Final Four: Florida, Virginia, Louisville and Creighton (had to be a homer) with Florida beating Louisville in the finals.

Disclaimer: All work done calculating the NCAA tournament bracket was completed during off-hours, lunch, coffee breaks or moments when the company helpdesk couldn't get me logged into the right corporate website to read emails explaining that NCAA brackets should be done on personal time.

Follow me on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN

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