In United States agricultural policy, the triple base plan, also called the flexible base plan, is a proposal under which farmers who raise program crops would receive program payments only on a certain percentage of their permitted acreage.
A producer participating in a federal price support program actually would have three categories of base acres for program purposes: Triple base is another name for what came to be known as normal flex acres.
Production flexibility contracts under the 1996 farm bill (P.L.
104-127) and the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program (DCP) agreements under the 2002 farm bill (P.L.
1101-1108) eliminated the linkage between direct payments and actual plantings.