Farm owners have until May 15 to submit data needed to notify them about their eligibility to receive additional base acres under Republicans’ July 2025 reconciliation law, according to an April 20 Agriculture Department directive. 

Reconciliation (Public Law 119-21), commonly referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill, provides an additional 30 million base acres to be allocated to farms based on their 2019-2023 cropping history. The law also requires all owners be notified of their eligibility to receive additional base acres. Base acres will automatically be assigned to farms unless owners opt out.  

Base acres are used to determine payments under federal farm programs such as Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, and more base acres typically translate to larger payments. Providing USDA with updated planting information also provides producers the opportunity to receive payments that more accurately reflect the needs of their farm. 

Corn, soybeans, and wheat are expected to receive the largest allocations of base acres, according to analysis from the University of Missouri’s Rural & Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center. The center projects Virginia could receive as many as 268,000 additional base acres across those three commodities, but most base acre gains are forecast to be concentrated in the Midwest and plains states. 

If data collected results in more than 30 million base acres added, acres allotted will be prorated. 

State and county Farm Service Agency offices must work together to ensure acreage history dig data is completed and loaded into the CRM Farm Records database and Acreage History and Base Allocation software by 6 p.m. EDT on May 15. Farm records updates for base reductions and restorations, producer associations, and cropland indicators also must be completed by the same deadline. All data will be pulled by that deadline. 

Information for farms that need to be copied back to 2019 must be submitted to the state FSA office by May 4. State offices also must submit any requests for newly created farms to the Farm Records Remediation site by May 8 if national FSA office assistance is needed. 

Incomplete or outdated records could result in inaccurate eligibility determinations. 

Farmers must have planted at least one currently covered commodity or had to have been blocked from planting because of a natural disaster during 2019-2023 to qualify. Additionally, producers’ updated base acreage, calculated in part using their historical acreage for 2019-2023, must exceed their current base acreage. 

Covered commodities include corn, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, peanuts, seed cotton and more.