In United States agricultural law, a farm’s base acreage is its crop-specific acreage of wheat, corn, grain sorghum, barley, oats, upland cotton, soybeans, canola, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sunflowers, and rice eligible to enroll in the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program

Direct and Counter-Cyclical Program

The Direct and Counter-cyclical Payment Program 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) under the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 101-171, Sec. 1101-1108). A farmer’s crop acreage base

Crop acreage base

Crop acreage base is a crop-specific measure equal to the average number of acres planted to a particular program crop for a specified number of years. The crop-specific nature of this measurement was important prior to the 1996 farm bill , which adopted an inclusive measure of base acreage and...

 is reduced by the portion of cropland placed in the Conservation Reserve Program

Conservation Reserve Program

The Conservation Reserve Program is a cost-share and rental payment program under the United States Department of Agriculture , and is administered by the USDA Farm Service Agency . Technical assistance for CRP is provided by the USDA Forest Service and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation...

 (CRP), but increased by CRP base acreage leaving the CRP. Farmers have the choice of base acreage used to calculate Production Flexibility Contract

Production flexibility contract

In the United States, a production flexibility contract is a 7-year contract covering crop years 1996-2002, authorized by the 1996 farm bill between the Commodity Credit Corporation and farmers, which makes fixed income support payments. Farmers were given production flexibility and...

payments for crop year 2002, or the average of acres planted for crop years 1998 through 2001.