2024 Farm Commodity Program Payment Estimates for Ohio Counties as of May 2025

By Carl Zulauf and Seungki Lee

This paper provides estimates of expected payments by the ARC-CO (Agriculture Risk Coverage – County version) and PLC (Price Loss Coverage) commodity programs for the 2024 crop year.

Official payment rates are expected in October 2025.  They can deviate notably from estimates as final prices and yields are yet known.  Prices and yields, particularly for ARC-CO, are in a range where small changes can cause large changes in payment rates.  Use the estimates with caution.

The estimates use 2024 crop year program parameters from USDA, FSA (US Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency), and latest available data for 2024 market year price estimates from USDA, FSA and county yield estimates from USDA, NASS (National Agricultural Statistics Service).

May 2025 Estimates of 2024 Crop Year Payments:

1. ARC-CO:  Ohio corn and soybean payments are expected for at least some counties.  As a revenue program, ARC-CO payment calculations include yield.  2024 Ohio weather was highly variable.  Yields and thus county payment rates will be variable.  Some counties have irrigated and non-irrigated base acres.  Payment estimates are calculated only for non-irrigated base since dryland production is far more common in Ohio.  Payment estimates per base acre vary from $0 (21 counties) to $90 (Greene) for corn base and from $0 (13 counties) to $58 (Fairfield) for soybean base (see appended maps).  These estimates include the 85% payment factor (i.e. 15% payment reduction factor).  No estimate is available for corn and soybeans in 24 and 15 counties.  A common reason is that too few farmers in the county responded to the NASS survey to estimate yield with statistical confidence.  County NASS yields are not available for wheat.  Also appended are maps of county gross revenue (estimated price times estimated yield) plus estimated ARC-CO pay rate per acre.  They illustrate that ARC-CO payments are countercyclical to low market revenue (correlation between total revenue and ARC-CO pay rate is roughly -0.30).  Higher revenue/yields are almost always preferred to an ARC-CO payment.
2. PLC:  At present, no PLC payments are expected for corn, soybeans, and wheat as the current estimate of US market year price is not below the effective reference price:  corn ($4.35 vs. $4.01), soybeans ($9.95 vs. $9.26), and wheat ($5.50 vs. $5.50).

Commodity Program Policy Objective:

1. ARC-CO provides assistance if a crop’s county market revenue is below 86% of a crop’s county benchmark market revenue for 5 recent crop years.
2. PLC provides assistance if a crop’s US market year price is below 100% of the crop’s US effective reference price set by Congress.
3. ARC-IC provides assistance if an ARC-IC farm’s average per acre revenue from all program crops is below 86% of the ARC-IC farm’s per acre benchmark revenue.

Payment Formulas:

ARC-CO payment rate per base acre = MAX [$0, or 86% times (county benchmark revenue minus observed revenue) times a farm’s PLC base yield times 85% payment reduction factor].  County benchmark revenue = (5-crop year Olympic average (high and low values removed) of recent US market year prices times 5-crop year Olympic average of recent trend-adjusted county yields).  Observed revenue = observed US crop year price times observed county yield.  ARC-CO payment rate is capped at 10% of county benchmark revenue.

PLC payment rate per base acre = MAX [$0, or (US effective reference price – US market year price) times a farm’s PLC base yield times 85% payment reduction factor].