NASS and USDA release county corn and soybean yields

The USDA released county estimated yields for corn and soybeans on Feb. 20. These yields will provide the farmers numbers to plug in county yield estimates on various Farm Bill calculators at Illinois and NDSU.
These will not be the actual yields used to calculate Farm Bill payments, but should provide a good estimate of what RMA yields will be for each county.
Those website payment calculators can be found at: https://z.umn.edu/ARC_PLC and www.ag.ndsu.edu/farmmanagement/farm-bill.
Table 1 has listed southwest Minnesota counties’ NASS/USDA yields for 2019 and 2018 rounded to the closest number. 
At the Farm Bill meetings held across the state, farmers were provided with handouts of county yields that will be used to determine the 2019 ARC County payments. 
Farmers should look at 2019 county corn and soybean yields compared to the last two columns (see table) to see if county yield is low enough to create an ARC County program payment.  Remember, these are not the actual yields used but should give farmers a good estimate.
The ARC Individual also might pay and that might be more than ARC County, and PLC may pay as well, depending on what the marketing year average prices do.
I encourage farmers to use these yield estimates in the program calculators to help make the decision about which option to sign up for.
Remember, you have to sign up by March 16, 2020, in order to receive a program payment for 2019 if your choice triggers a payment.
Dave Bau, Extension Educator, Ag Business Management, U of M Extension Regional Office, Worthington, 507-372-3900 ext 3906, bauxx003@umn.edu