Sponsors (2)
The bill modernizes base-acre calculations and gives acreage owners flexibility to better match recent planting patterns, improving predictability for many farmers but likely reducing payments for operations with lower recent planting and imposing short-term administrative transition costs.
Farmers: base acres will be recalculated using 2020–2024 planting and prevented-planting averages, so program payments and acreage measures will better reflect recent planting patterns.
Owners of switched acreage: owners can choose which commodity counts for years when acreage was switched, reducing double-counting and allowing flexibility to align base acres with actual crop choices.
Farmers and USDA/state agencies: clarifying and standardizing the definition of 'base acres' and removing generic-base references reduces administrative ambiguity and improves program predictability.
Farmers: operations whose recent 2020–2024 planting averages are lower than historical bases may receive reduced program payments, lowering farm income.
Farmers who shifted crops or left land fallow: requiring inclusion of years with zero planting in the 5-year average can depress averages and reduce payments for rotated or fallowed acreage.
USDA, farmers, and federal employees: implementing the mandatory update 'as soon as practicable' creates administrative transition costs and potential delays or paperwork, causing uncertainty during the 2025 crop year.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Introduced September 23, 2025 by Dustin Johnson · Last progress September 23, 2025
Requires a one-time, mandatory update of farm "base acres" for the 2025 crop year by recalculating each farm's base acres using a five-year (2020–2024) average of planted and prevented-from-planting acreage in covered commodities. It standardizes the definition of "base acres," sets rules for how mixed-use years are counted, makes the Secretary of Agriculture responsible for the recalculation and prevented-planting determinations, and makes conforming statutory edits to related program language (payment yields, payment acres, price loss coverage).