To be eligible for payments under DCP, owners, operators, landlords, tenants, or sharecroppers must: Base acres and payment yields are established for the following commodities: barley; corn; grain sorghum, including dual purpose varieties that can be harvested as grain; oats; canola, crambe, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame and sunflower, including oil and non-oil varieties; peanuts, beginning in 2003; rice, excluding wild rice; soybeans; upland cotton; and wheat.
The Farm Bill added counter-cyclical payments, which provide support counter to the cycle of market prices as part of a “safety net” in the event of low crop prices.
The effective price for each commodity equals the direct payment rate plus the higher of: the national average market price received by producers during the marketing year, or the national loan rate for the commodity.
Farm owners, or their designees, were provided a one-time opportunity to choose from five options in determining DCP base acres.
fact sheet available on FSA’s Web site[permanent dead link]