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
In economics, a price support may be either a subsidy, a production quota, or a price control, each with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level.
In the case of a price control, a p ...
program actually would have three categories of base acres for program purposes:
:1) permitted acres on which
deficiency payments would be made;
:2) permitted acres on which no federal payments would be made, but could be planted to other crops, either specified or unspecified;
:3) idled acres (those required to be set aside under acreage reduction rules) where no crops other than those for conservation could be planted.
Triple base is another name for what came to be known as
normal flex acres. Production flexibility contracts under the
1996 farm bill
The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-127), known informally as the Freedom to Farm Act, the FAIR Act, or the 1996 U.S. Farm Bill, was the omnibus 1996 farm bill that, among other provisions, revises and simplifies ...
(P.L. 104-127) and the
Direct and Counter-cyclical Program
The Direct and Counter-cyclical Payment Program (DCP) of the USDA provides payments to eligible producers on farms enrolled for the 2002 through 2007 crop years. There are two types of DCP payments – direct payments and counter-cyclical payments. ...
(DCP) agreements under the
2002 farm bill
The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, also known as the 2002 Farm Bill, includes ten titles, addressing a great variety of issues related to agriculture, ecology, energy, trade, and nutrition. This act has been superseded by the 200 ...
(P.L. 101-171, Sec. 1101-1108) eliminated the linkage between direct payments and actual plantings.
References
*{{CRS, article = Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition, url = http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05jun/97-905.pdf, author= Jasper Womach
United States Department of Agriculture