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Crop acreage base

crop-specific measure of acres planted

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ5187945 ↗
Source-derived summary

Crop acreage base is a crop-specific measure equal to the average number of acres planted (or considered planted) to a particular program crop for a specified number of years. The crop-specific nature of this measurement was important prior to the 1996 farm bill (P.L. 104-127), which adopted an inclusive measure of base acreage and allowed planting flexibility among the program crops. The sum of the crop acreage bases for all program crops on a farm could not exceed the farm acreage. The acreage base was used in determining the number of acres a farmer, under an acreage reduction program, had to remove from normal crop production and devote to conserving uses in order to be eligible for USDA price and income supports.

See also

Base acreage

Farm acreage base

References

This article incorporates public domain material from Jasper Womach. Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition (PDF). Congressional Research Service.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Crop acreage base” as crop-specific measure of acres planted. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 2005—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Crop, acreage and base can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as crop-specific measure of acres planted. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5187945. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 2005.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Crop acreage base”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Crop acreage base primary sources, Crop acreage base archive and Crop research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Crop acreage base” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.