USDA has announced the availability of two farm program decision tools that will help producers analyze the base update, yield update, and ARC/PLC program enrollment decisions coming up soon at local FSA offices. USDA information on the announcement is available on the web (click here). The national decision tools were created as part of cooperative agreements between FSA and two development groups, one led by the University of Illinois and one a collaboration between Texas A&M University and FAPRI at the University of Missouri.

The two decision tools provide the same general analysis of base acreage and yield update options and the broader decision on electing the ARC revenue-based safety net or the PLC price-based safety net for the 2014-2018 life of farm commodity programs under the 2014 Farm Bill. Both tools provide a probablity-based analysis of potential farm program supports and show not just expected payments, but also the potential variance in payments, given a range of yield and price expectations and variabilty over the next 5 years (2014-2018). Both tools should produce similar answers, but could vary due to programming differences in how they model price and yield distributions and correlations.

The tools are available on the web at:

University of Illinois: 

Texas A&M/FAPRI: https://usda.afpc.tamu.edu/