Subsidy payments under the new Agricultural Risk Coverage program will vary by as much as $90 an acre among counties in the same state for 2014 crops, said economists Carl Zulauf of Ohio State and Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois. The economists examined variation within states as a followup to their estimates that the USDA will disburse $4.1 billion to corn growers and $400 million to soybean growers who enrolled their 2014 crops in ARC, which shields crop revenue from low prices and poor yields. Writing at farmdoc daily, Zulauf and Schnitkey said variation in payments per acre should be expected under any risk-management program. ARC payments “per program base acre will vary widely by county for 2014 crop year corn and soybeans,” they said. “Double-digit variations … will occur at times between adjacent counties.”
Larger variations were projected for corn payments, peaking at $90 an acre in Nebraska, than for soybeans, where the largest variation was $66 an acres, also in Nebraska. Zulauf and Schnitkey said they looked at counties in the 10 leading states for each crop. Because yields and growing conditions vary between counties, it is a “potentially non-trivial” point whether the USDA calculates payments based on the county where the local office is located or the county where the farm is located, said the economists.