For 2025 Iowa Soybeans, the Script Flips — PLC Usually Wins
We run the Iowa 2025 Soybean numbers
In our previous post we ran 2025 corn through ARC-CO and PLC for all 99 Iowa counties and found that ARC-CO was usually the better program — often by a wide margin. Several of you asked the obvious next question: what about soybeans? So we built the companion file. Attached is a 2025 ARC-CO and PLC estimate for soybeans in all 99 Iowa counties, and the headline is almost the mirror image of corn: for most of the state, PLC is the better program on beans.
The framework is the same one OBBBA gave us. The ARC-CO revenue guarantee is 90% of benchmark revenue and the maximum payment is capped at 12%. For 2025 soybeans, the benchmark price is $12.17 and the projected market-year average (MYA) price is $10.40 — about a 14.5% price drop. The PLC side runs off a $10.71 effective reference price, so with the MYA at $10.40 the PLC rate works out to about 31 cents per bushel.
Here’s why beans behave differently than corn. ARC-CO is a revenue program — it pays when county revenue (yield times price) falls below the guarantee, so it responds to both price and yield. PLC is a price program — it pays the reference-price shortfall on your PLC yield, period. On corn, a bigger price drop combined with softer yields in a lot of counties pushed revenue below the guarantee and lit up ARC-CO. On soybeans, two things work against ARC-CO: the price drop is smaller, and 2025 was a strong bean year in Iowa. Most counties came in at or above their benchmark yield, which props revenue back up and shrinks — or zeroes out — the ARC-CO payment.
