WASHINGTON, DC — On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency published the 2025 Price Loss Coverage (PLC) payment rates for southern long grain and medium grain rice and assistance should be hitting participating producers’ accounts as early as today. The 2025 crop year marks the first year rice farmers will receive the enhanced protections provided under the modernized farm safety net provisions enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). For rice farming, the PLC program is the cornerstone of the rice farm safety net, which OBBBA strengthened by raising the statutory reference price for long and medium grain rice to $16.90/cwt.

On Friday, UDSA published the 2025 Market Year Average (MYA) Price for long grain at $10.10/cwt and medium grain rice at $14.60/cwt. With the MYA prices finalized, this translates into a final payment rate of $6.80/cwt for long grain and $2.30/cwt for medium grain rice, which will be paid to producers with base acres this month. Payments for temperate japonica rice will begin in January 2027, once its MYA is finalized.

“The 2025 crop year was incredibly challenging for the rice industry, and we are fortunate to have the nearly 21 percent increase in the PLC reference prices for rice—which represents the most substantial investment in the farm bill programs since the 2002 Farm Bill when considering all the Title I, crop insurance, and trade investments made in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” said USA Rice President & CEO Peter Bachmann. “We are grateful for the leadership of Chairman John Boozman and Chairman GT Thompson for spearheading the effort to update the reference prices last year as part of the reconciliation process, and for USDA working to implement all of those programmatic changes included in OBBBA.”

Producers receiving PLC payments are reminded that OBBBA also updated the payment limit to $155,000, which is adjusted annually for inflation. USDA has determined that the payment limit for the 2025 crop year will be $160,000. Additionally, a sequestration reduction is still applied to the payment at a rate of 5.7 percent, which will be applied to the payment amount determined before any reductions have been applied, including payment limit provisions. 

Published Date: November 3, 2026