Sponsors (2)
The bill updates base-acre and payment calculations to align farm support with recent planting and protect disaster-affected acreage, at the cost of a one-time reset that may lower payments for some farms, potential shifts in program costs borne by taxpayers, and added short-term USDA implementation burden.
Farmers and agricultural producers: base-acre and payment calculations will use a 2020–2024 five-year average so payments and eligibility better reflect recent planting patterns.
Farmers and agricultural producers who experienced prevented planting (drought, flood, disasters): prevented-planting acreage will count toward the averages, protecting base acres and helping avoid permanent payment losses from disaster years.
Farm owners/operators with multiple covered commodities planted in a year: owners may elect which commodity counts (avoiding double-counting), giving producers administrative flexibility to preserve favorable base-acre allocations.
Some farmers and farm owners: the one-time reset of base acres could reduce base acreage and future program payments for operations that previously benefited from legacy or generic base allocations.
Taxpayers and federal budgets: changing base-acre calculations may shift subsidy distributions and could increase program costs for some commodities or farms, raising federal outlays.
USDA staff and rural farm service offices: recalculating base acres 'as soon as practicable' imposes a short-term administrative workload and implementation cost on the Department and field offices.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires USDA to recalculate farm base acres for covered commodities using a 2020–2024 five-year average for application in the 2025 crop year, removing 'generic base acres.'
Introduced September 23, 2025 by Dustin Johnson · Last progress September 23, 2025
Requires the Department of Agriculture to perform a one-time recalculation of farm "base acres" for covered commodities so that program base acres used in 2025 are derived from a five-year average of planted and prevented-planting acreage for 2020–2024. The change removes references to "generic base acres" and adjusts related statutory language for payment yields, payment acres, and price-loss coverage numbering. The update must be completed "as soon as practicable" after enactment and applies to the 2025 crop year; it changes how commodity program payment acres are determined and may shift future program payments among farms and crops based on recent planting history.