Northwest Iowa Farmers Say USDA Miscalculated ARC Payments

Some farmers in Dickinson County say they were paid far less than expected through the USDA’s Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) program for the 2024 crop year, and they’re organizing a public meeting to compare numbers and discuss next steps.

Scott Titterington, who farms near Milford, says a group of local producers has been reviewing ARC payment calculations and believes Dickinson County payments may have been significantly undercounted.

“A few of us farmers who have been digging into this situation decided the best way to present what was going on was to have a public meeting,” Titterington says. “We want to invite our neighbors, farmers, ag lenders — anybody with an interest — to share what we’ve learned so far.”

ARC is one of the USDA’s largest commodity support programs and provides payments when revenue for a specific crop falls below a historical benchmark.

Titterington says ARC payments in nearby Emmet and Kossuth counties were around $90 per acre, but Dickinson County farmers received closer to $30 per acre.

“We thought something similar was coming for Dickinson County,” he says, “and we wound up getting paid around $30 an acre based off some calculation errors, we think, that come from the national office in Washington, D.C.”

Titterington says they’ve learned that just over 98,000 acres of Dickinson County farmland were enrolled in ARC in 2024. Based on the payment levels in neighboring counties, he believes local farmers could be owed millions more if the calculations are corrected.

“We’re hoping it can be corrected,” Titterington says, “but I think that’s going to involve work from everybody — reaching out to congressmen, senators, and people in Washington — to get USDA to dig deeper and hopefully fix it.”

The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 6 at 10 a.m. at the Dickinson County Expo Building in Spirit Lake. If weather becomes an issue, organizers plan to meet Wednesday at the same time and location.