USDA-FSA announced today an extension of the deadline to make the ARC/PLC program election and the accompanying base acreage reallocation and payment yield update decisions. The decisions will now be due at local FSA offices by April 7, 2015 with producers required to get an appointment or get registered for an appointment by that date.

While FSA reported substantial sign-up has been completed nationwide, a reported 10% of producers are still needing to complete the ARC/PLC election and the extra week could allow that progress to continue.

With the extra week of sign-up, there is also an extra week of time for analysis of program decisions given updated yield and price data. More knowledge of 2014 yield results and price forecasts allows producers to have more confidence in their expectations for 2014 program payments, whether in ARC or in PLC. The online decision tools remain available and for producers that have already used them, re-running the analysis with new price forecasts or 2014 final yield information is an easy step to get more up-to-date analysis. With ever-changing price outlook, the analysis now could change perspectives on ARC and PLC from analysis done weeks ago, particularly with slightly higher price forecasts for 2014 at present.