COLUMBIA, Mo. – As the deadline approaches for growers to select between USDA safety net programs, University of Missouri’s Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center has developed a tool to help growers decide which plans to choose for their major crops.

The Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) programs, along with federally sponsored crop insurance programs, constitute the backbone of the farm safety net for U.S. crop producers, said Alejandro Plastina, director of the MU Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center (RaFF). While PLC offers price protection, ARC offers shallow loss revenue protection. ARC is available at the county level (ARC-CO) and at the individual farm level (ARC-IC).

“While most land-grant universities publish their own decision tools to help local farmers evaluate the potential payments from ARC-CO and PLC, RaFF’s ARC/PLC Payments Explorer does not require downloading spreadsheets, setting up an account or sharing any personal information,” Plastina said. “With four clicks, farmers across the country can evaluate the potential payment rates from ARC-CO and PLC for corn, soybean and wheat program acres in crop year 2025.”

The deadline to enroll is April 15, 2025. Plastina said any payments triggered for the 2025 crop year will be issued in October 2026.

This decision tool provides a simple four-step procedure to compare potential payments per enrolled acre for covered commodities from PLC and ARC-CO in any county of the United States under three scenarios: a baseline scenario, a lower-price scenario and a higher-price scenario, Plastina said. Since ARC-IC involves farm-specific parameters not publicly available for analysis, ARC-IC is not included in this decision tool, he said.

RaFF’s ARC/PLC Payments Explorer

• Corn: http://muext.us/corn
• Soybeans: http://muext.us/soy
• Wheat: http://muext.us/wheat

The list of commodities included in RaFF’s ARC/PLC Payments Explorer will be expanded in 2026.

Users follow these simple steps to generate a report:

• Select a county from the drop-down menu.
• Select the irrigation system from the county-specific list.
• Select the projected price to use in the baseline scenario.
• Select the PLC yield.

Alternative price scenarios can easily be explored by selecting different marketing year average (MYA) prices from the MYA price box.