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Bipartisan ARC-County Improvement Act introduced in the Senate

Two U.S. Senators have introduced bipartisan legislation to tweak the Agricultural Risk Coverage county level (ARC-county) program in the next Farm Bill.

North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp and Iowa Republican Joni Ernst say the ARC-County Improvement Act will strengthen the safety net for farmers and make sure they get accurate payments.

Heitkamp says the bill would fix a glitch in the current program.

“Where your county that determines your payment was not the county where you produced your crops, it was the county where your home place existed.  So we need to make this change.  We’ve pushed very hard to get USDA to do the right thing and use the county in which the crops were grown.”

The ARC-county program has been criticized because payments can vary widely from county to county.

The Improvement Act builds on a bill successfully passed by Heitkamp in 2015 that allows farmers whose land is across multiple counties to have their ARC-CO payments recalculated so those payments reflect what’s owed to them in the physical counties where their farms are located.

“But we want to make sure going forward that program is not dependent on where the farmstead is, but rather where the crops are grown.”

The American Soybean Association supports the legislation. ASA president Ron Moore (of Illinois) says the ARC-county program is of great importance to soy growers, stressing the importance of support for farm revenues during these hard economic times.