ARC Beats PLC for 2026 Corn and Soybean Base, Illinois Economist Says

Farmers face a Dec. 11 deadline to choose between Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage for the 2026 crop year — and this time, no automatic payment of the higher of the two will bail out a wrong call. University of Illinois agricultural economist Nick Paulson estimates ARC-County will outpay and outtrigger PLC for corn and soybean base acres across much of the Midwest.

The timeline itself is unusual. "This is a weird time to be making this decision. Typically, we would have been making this 2026 program decision back in the spring in March," Paulson said, pointing to the base acre update as a likely cause of the delay.

What did the One Big Beautiful Bill Act change?

PLC is a price-based program. It pays when the PLC effective price — the higher of the U.S. marketing-year average price or the market loan rate — drops below the effective reference price. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the statutory reference prices that serve as fixed floors:

• Corn: $4.10, up 11%
• Soybeans: $10.00, up 19%
• Wheat: $6.35, up 15%

The effective reference price is capped at 1.15 times the statutory reference price. For 2026, corn and soybean effective reference prices exceed their floors and will be used; wheat's did not, so its statutory $6.35 applies.

ARC is a county revenue program. It triggers when actual county revenue falls below 90% of the benchmark, with payments capped at 12% of benchmark revenue and a payment band running from 90% down to 78%. Benchmark prices are identical for every farmer; yields vary by county.

One gap remains: no official county-level yield estimates will be released before December, with those numbers arriving around June. Even so, Paulson said farmers should read their 2025 harvest better now than they could have in March.

Why does ARC look stronger?

The projected marketing-year average prices for corn and soybeans currently sit above the PLC effective reference prices. "Prices would have to fall [for corn and soybeans] before we'd get into a situation where the PLC program is going to trigger," Paulson said.

The ARC benchmarks, by contrast, sit above current market projections for corn, soybeans and wheat, meaning ARC payments would trigger. "In general, ARC is providing greater price protection," Paulson said.

Based on futures data and historical trends as of Oct. 19, Paulson puts the odds of PLC triggering at:

• Corn: 30% chance the MYA price falls below $4.42
• Soybeans: 15% chance the MYA price falls below $10.71
• Wheat: 50% chance the MYA price falls below $6.35

Wheat is the split decision. The November World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates cut the wheat MYA projection by 10 cents a bushel from October, which Paulson said tilts more wheat situations toward PLC.

How should growers decide?

Paulson offered four steps:

• Estimate county yields from your own field results and talks with neighbors, since official data won't arrive until June.
• Review your PLC yields: "Every PLC yield at every farm is going to be different," Paulson said.
• Run a what-if analysis on your most likely and most feared price and yield outcomes.
• Use decision aids: Farmdoc's ARC-CO/PLC What-If Tool and ARC/PLC calculator, plus the University of Minnesota's ARC/PLC calculator.

Those probabilities rest on futures markets and historical patterns as of mid-October, not on harvested results, and November's WASDE wheat cut shows how fast the math can move before the Dec. 11 deadline.