H.R. 5551 — Balanced Agricultural Support and Efficiency Act

This section revises the definition of base acres for covered commodities (i.e., wheat, corn, soybeans, peanuts, seed cotton, and others) to mean the number of acres determined for a farm under section 1112 of the Agricultural Act of 2014 and eliminates the concept of generic base acres by striking related provisions and references throughout the statute. (As background, base acres determine payment acres under the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs, which provide revenue or price protection payments to producers when actual revenues or prices for covered commodities fall below specified benchmarks.) The section further requires the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a mandatory one-time update of all base acres on each farm for the 2025 crop year, as soon as practicable after enactment, by reallocating them proportionally among covered commodities based on the 5-year average (2020-2024) of acreage planted for harvest, grazing, haying, silage, or other purposes or prevented from planting due to drought, flood, other natural disasters, or conditions beyond producers' control—without excluding any year of zero planting for a commodity. (Thus, base acres shift to reflect recent planting patterns on the farm; for multiple or prevented plantings not under established double-cropping practices, owners elect one covered commodity per acreage and year.) It also preserves limited adjustments to base acres for specified circumstances (e.g., loss of base acres outside producer control) and makes conforming amendments to payment yields (sec. 1113), payment acres (sec. 1114), and PLC provisions (sec. 1116).