2015 ARC-CO payments have been issued by the FSA. As shown on the map, Iowa counties received a final payment amount anywhere from $0 to $73 for corn acres, and $0 to $53 for soybean acres. You can view the gross amount per base acre in each county, as well as the 85% adjustment since you’re only paid on 85% of base acres, and then the final amount after the 6.8% sequester deduction.

County-to-county and year-to-year variances can be caused by a number of factors included in program calculations. Some of these are the actual yield, historical county yields that influence the county specific benchmark revenue, and also which high and low yield years are dropped from the 5-year Olympic average yield calculation.

Below are examples showing why there were changes in the ARC-CO corn payment rate from 2014 to 2015 for Cherokee County and Pottawattamie County. The 5-year benchmark Olympic average yield is calculated by dropping the high and the low yield and averaging the remaining three. In both examples, their benchmark yield decreased from 2014 to 2015. In 2014, these counties had an actual yield that was lower than their benchmark yield, but when moving to 2015, their actual yields increased significantly beyond their benchmark average yield. The benchmark price remained the same from 2014 to 2015, but the national price also decreased slightly. These two counties illustrate examples of large differences between 2014 and 2015. Many other counties also experienced decreases from 2014 to 2015, but typically on a smaller scale. As you can see, there are many variables changing from year to year that can affect the ARC-CO payment rate.