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

Permitted acreage

In United States agricultural policy, permitted acreage refers to the acreage on which a farm program participant was permitted to grow a program crop after satisfying acreage reduction requirements. For example, when a 10% acreage reduction program was in effect for wheat, a farmer with a wheat...

. A producer participating in a federal price support program actually would have three categories of base acres for program purposes:

1) permitted acres on which deficiency payments

Deficiency payments

In the United States, deficiency payments are direct government payments made to farmers who participated in annual commodity programs for wheat, feed grains, rice, or cotton, prior to 1996....

 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

Normal flex acres

In United States agricultural law, Normal flex acreage is a provision of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 requiring a mandatory 15% reduction in payment acreage. Under this provision, producers were ineligible to receive deficiency payments on 15% of their crop acreage base...

. Production flexibility contracts under the 1996 farm bill (P.L. 104-127) and 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) agreements under the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 101-171, Sec. 1101-1108) eliminated the linkage between direct payments and actual plantings.