Delaware agricultural producers have less than two weeks remaining to provide crucial planting information that will determine their qualification for extra federal base acres through a new program established by Republican legislation passed in July 2025.
The Agriculture Department issued guidance on April 20 establishing the May 15 deadline for farmers to supply necessary data for the additional base acre program created under the reconciliation package (Public Law 119-21), nicknamed the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
This legislation establishes a distribution of 30 million additional base acres nationwide, with allocations determined by each farm’s planting patterns from 2019 through 2023. The law mandates that all property owners receive notification regarding their potential qualification for these extra base acres, which will be automatically assigned unless owners choose to decline participation.
Federal base acres serve as the foundation for calculating payments through government agricultural programs including Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, with higher base acre totals generally resulting in increased payment amounts. Updating planting records with USDA also enables farmers to receive compensation that better matches their operation’s specific requirements.
Research from the University of Missouri’s Rural & Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center indicates that corn, soybeans, and wheat will likely receive the most substantial base acre allocations. The analysis projects Virginia may gain up to 268,000 additional base acres for these three crops, though the majority of increases are anticipated in Midwest and plains regions.
Should the collected information indicate demand exceeding the 30 million acre limit, allocations will be reduced proportionally across all participants.
Local and state Farm Service Agency locations must collaborate to guarantee that historical acreage information is finalized and entered into both the CRM Farm Records system and Acreage History and Base Allocation programs before 6 p.m. Eastern Time on May 15. Updates to farm records covering base reductions and restorations, producer partnerships, and cropland designations must also meet this same deadline, when all information will be extracted from the system.
Farms requiring data restoration back to 2019 must provide this information to state FSA offices by May 4. State offices must also forward requests for newly established farms to the Farm Records Remediation platform by May 8 when assistance from the national FSA office is required.
Farmers risk receiving incorrect eligibility decisions if their records remain incomplete or outdated.
To qualify for the program, producers must have cultivated at least one currently supported commodity or been prevented from planting due to natural disasters between 2019 and 2023. Furthermore, farmers’ revised base acreage calculations, which incorporate their historical planting data from 2019-2023, must surpass their existing base acreage totals.
Supported commodities encompass corn, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, peanuts, seed cotton, and additional crops.
