Farmers will be receiving farm program payments this week for the 2014 crop year. USDA’s Farm Service Agency will start sending out roughly $3.9 billion in ARC or PLC payments nationally, with state totals still undetermined. However, South Dakota FSA Executive Director Craig Schaunaman says the ARC-County program for corn will be triggering payments.

He says corn payment kicked in because the corn price is 30-percent below the historical benchmark price used by the ARC-County program.

However, he says the payments are also figured on the yield in each county. So the level varies from county to county. Schaunaman says there is a big variance in the payment levels even in adjoining counties.

The ARC and PLC payments will be 6.8-percent lower than farmers might have expected because of the federal budget cuts known as sequester.

In the upcoming months, disbursements will be made for other crops after marketing year average prices are published by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.