USDA has just announced an extension of the deadline for the base and yield update decisions from today (February 27) to March 31, consistent with the ARC vs. PLC election decision deadline. All three decisions are inherently linked with each other, so making the deadlines the same and extending today’s base and yield deadline is a logical way to handle the current rush and demand for enrollment relative to FSA staffing resources.

Some of the program details relating to yields were not available until very recently, such as procedures for yield histories for hybrid seed corn and also popcorn production. And, the county yields for 2014 that factor into the ARC-CO revenue guarantees and payments were just released last week as well (technically, NASS released yields per harvested acre while FSA still has to calculate yields per planted acre for purposes of the program, so the yield data is still not exact but approximate). Those yields can affect the performance of ARC-CO relative to PLC and potentially affect the ARC/PLC decision and the base acreage decision as well.

All of that means pushing the base and yield update decision back to March 31, in line with the ARC/PLC election will give producer time to digest this latest information. And, with the spring crop insurance deadline of March 15, producers will be able to study final decisions on both commodity programs and crop insurance programs, including any supplemental coverage, at the same time.

The official news release from USDA provides details of the deadline extension.