The U.S.

Farm Service Agency The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is the United States Department of Agriculture agency that was formed by merging the farm loan portfolio and staff of the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) and the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service ...

administers Annual Crop Revenue Election (ACRE, a

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

), a new program authorized by the

2008 Farm Bill The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (, also known as the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill) was a $288 billion, five-year agricultural policy bill that was passed into law by the United States Congress on June 18, 2008. The bill was a continuatio ...

that begins in crop year 2009. Through ACRE, the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

(USDA) offers producers an alternative to the

Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program The Direct and Counter-cyclical Payment Program (DCP) of the USDA provides payments to eligible producers on farms enrolled for the 2002 through 2007 crop years. There are two types of DCP payments – direct payments and counter-cyclical payments. ...

. The ACRE alternative provides eligible producers a state-level

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

guarantee, based on the 5-year state

Olympic average A truncated mean or trimmed mean is a statistical measure of central tendency, much like the mean and median. It involves the calculation of the mean after discarding given parts of a probability distribution or sample at the high and low end, a ...

yield and the 2-year national average price. ACRE payments are made when both state- and farm-level triggers are met. By participating in ACRE, producers elect to forgo

counter-cyclical payment Counter-cyclical payment (CCP) — Under the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program (DCP) created by the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 101-171, Sec. 1101-1108), counter-cyclical payments are made to participating producers when the marketing year average pric ...

s, receive a 20-percent reduction in direct payments and a 30-percent reduction in CCC commodity loan rates. A decision to elect ACRE binds the elected land to the program through the 2012 crop year, the last crop year covered by the 2008 Farm Bill. Because of

tradeoff A trade-off (or tradeoff) is a situational decision that involves diminishing or losing on quality, quantity, or property of a set or design in return for gains in other aspects. In simple terms, a tradeoff is where one thing increases, and anoth ...

s with electing ACRE over DCP and the irrevocable commitment to ACRE, producers are encouraged to review ACRE decision tools from State extension and other sources to help evaluate the choices.

External links

Farm Service Administration webpage on the ACRE program

Economic analysis of revenue-based support programs like ACRE

Economic analysis of the ACRE program
United States Department of Agriculture programs