Farm Bill Baseline Spending Changing

At a Farm Bill Summit this week, a lot of analysis went into the costs and benefits of the current farm bill and how the next farm bill can take shape.

Jonathan Coppess said the current costs of new programs ARC and PLC will look different by the time the next farm bill goes into effect.

“The ARC program spending drops significantly and quickly going into the out years into 2020 and we see PLC increasing over that itme.”

A lot of that is due to low commodity prices which will be seen in the ARC County program with Coppess noting, “We’re readjusting back to the lower price scenario, back into the sort of steady state they’re going out. Thus we would expect that payments that they’ve seen over the past couple of years will be significantly smaller.”

Producers will be able to change programs before the 2018 Farm Bill takes effect.