Crop Insurance is a federal government instituted and managed entity, so there are more rules and added opportunities beyond the basics. In this article, we are going to introduce more of these opportunities within the policies we have reviewed, introduce other policy types available for other crops, and showcase some of the more important crop insurance rules.
We cannot get into all the possibilities, nor mention all the rules. The crop insurance agent you choose will be able to help you see how some of these aspects could work for you, and will have working knowledge of what other farms in your region have utilized to make their insurance plans work best for them.
Remember, you don’t shop around for price when selecting a crop insurance provider, you are selecting someone you trust and that is willing to communicate well with you. Your crop insurance will better achieve your farm’s goals if you work with a provider which understands your situation and needs and then helps you select the right policies and coverage levels to meet them.
Planting Dates
First, let’s introduce a few of the crop insurance rules that are likely to impact your farm at some point.
The timing of when you plant your crop is important. We can’t plant too early, or we negate our policies’ replant coverage. We also need to have our crops planted on time, or our guarantees will decrease. This is due to the simple fact that as planting date gets later, the yield potential generally decreases.
Wisconsin corn fields managed as grain need to be planted by May 31st (May 25th for northern tier of counties), and by June 5th (May 31st for northern tier) if managed as corn silage.
Each day that planting is delayed after May 31, your guarantee will be reduced by 1%. 25 days after your final planting date is the end of the late planting period, at which point your policy’s guarantee will be capped at 60%.
Soybeans follow the same pattern, with slightly different dates as shown on this map:
Cover Crops and Double Crops
The rules surrounding cover crops and double cropping have changed dramatically in recent years and will likely continue to do so. Cover cropping is allowed on all crop acres in WI. The cover crop needs to be terminated at appropriate times to ensure that your main crop insurance coverage is not impacted. Current situation for all WI Counties is that covers must be terminated by the date of crop emergence.
Termination can include harvest of the cover crop, chemical termination, or physical methods such as tillage or appropriately timed roller crimping.
“Soybeans Following Another Crop” is an RMA initiative that is now allowed in many WI Counties, but at reduced coverage (60%) and only through a Written Agreement. Farms will need to have a three year history of such a practice.
Relay cropping (planting into winter wheat) is also allowed in some situations. More information is available on the USDA Double Cropping Initiative website.
Insurance Add-ons
The base policies we have described in this module have extras available which we will introduce below. If these extras may be applicable to your farm operation, make sure you ask your agent about how they may work for you.
Yield Adjustment Opportunities
There are two available options that can add to your farm’s actual production history (APH), allowing you to have higher insurance guarantees.
- Yield Exclusion. Costs around $1/acre, but allows you to delete years that are well below normal from your APH calculations.
- Trend Adjustment. More costly, but allows you to add county and crop-specific yield increase trends to your APH. Most WI Counties add a bit over 1 bushel for corn, and around half a bushel for soy and wheat per year with this option. This option is completely separate from your actual harvest, giving you higher insurance guarantees without the yield history to prove it.
Revenue Protection Price Setting Options
There are two primary ways that farms can change how the price per bushel is set within a Revenue Protection or Area Revenue Protection policy.
- One is to purchase the Harvest Price Exclusion policy. These policies only have an initial guarantee and do not have the at-harvest guarantee. Thus, if the commodity’s price goes up over the course of the growing season, your insurance guarantee does not increase. It will be cheaper per acre, but you lose a key potential insurance value.
- The second is Price Flexing which allows you to purchase add-on pricing opportunities, rather than the base February and harvest pricing times. You can pre-select 15 or 30 day intervals during the crop season and use the greatest of the prices within them.
Enhanced Coverage Options (ECO)
ECO is an added policy onto your main insurance policy. It essentially covers part of your policy’s deductible, but does so on the basis of an Area Revenue Policy, not your own farm’s APH based policy. Specifically, an ECO policy can cover loss of county-wide revenue between 86% and either 90% or 95%, whichever trigger you select. Calculations are completely separate from your base policy.
See the RMA factsheet and example calculations regarding ECO on this Enhanced Coverage Option Fact Sheet
Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO)
Similar to the ECO just discussed, but to enroll in SCO, a farm must have been signed up for the Agriculture Risk Coverage program through USDA for that crop and on those acres. SCO covers the range of 75% to 86% of an associated crop and county’s Area Revenue or Area Yield Protection plan. Farms sign up for a coverage level between 50 and 100%, which will then dictate the dollar amount of any indemnity payment received. Again, as with ECO, SCO calculations are completely separate from your own farm’s policy calculations. Because of this fact, it is possible for you to receive indemnities through your main policy, but no indemnities through corresponding ECO and SCO policies, or vice versa.
To hear how ECO and SCO actually work, Dr. Paul Mitchell describes them in some detail in this video.
Here is what these policies look like graphically:
Forage Specific Policy Opportunities and Farm Revenue Policies
There are also some forage crop insurance policy types that you may want to know about, so we’ll discuss them quickly, too.
Corn silage vs corn grain insurance.
A corn silage policy protects tons produced, instead of bushels. Most of the policy rules are the same, however there are a couple date differences. Planting date can be 5 days later than corn for grain and still receive full coverage – i.e. June 5 in most of the state, rather than May 31. The biggest date difference is that silage policies cover losses which occur through September 30. Grain policies cover losses that occur through December 10.
You must notify your agent prior to harvest if you have a field covered as grain that you change plans and want to harvest as silage.
Perennial forage coverage options
- Forage Production, can purchase a Yield Protection or Group Revenue Protection policy
- Forage Seeding. Protects against less than 75% of normal stand establishment – purchased as dollars/acre protection.
- Pasture, Rangeland Forage Insurance Rainfall Index: Insures against drought, fall signup (Nov. 15) and only on certain acre situations. Coverage is essentially a dollar amount, for a two-month period.
Farm Revenue Policies
Without going into detail, there are also policies available that can cover farm revenue. These policies have been designed for farms with highly varied revenue sources, fresh market commodity crops, or specialized marketing situations. The options are termed AGR-Lite and Whole Farm Revenue Protection. Both involve good records and insure against your overall Schedule F income.
Additional Rules and Resources
There are many other rules, but a few key ones to know about and check with your agent include:
- Hybrid/cultivar maturity. Planting a longer day RM corn hybrid or maturity group soybean than allowed will negatively affect your coverage.
- Reporting. Acreage reporting has been made simpler, as you can now do both FSA and RMA acreage reporting in one step, but make sure you meet the deadlines. You must report any potential crop losses or loss events to your agent as soon as you are aware of the loss.
One last rule we will specifically mention is that to maintain insurability of a crop, the crop must be appropriately managed via standard agricultural practices. In other words, you must:
- Fertilize appropriately.
- Control pests appropriately.
- Conduct appropriate planting and other practices.
- Make good faith efforts to conduct timely management.
2023 may be an example of this concept. If your preemergence herbicide didn’t work due to too dry soil, you can’t claim losses due to weeds if you didn’t attempt to control emerged weeds with a post-emergent product.
Most of the information we have just detailed is available at the Risk Management Agency website. However, the site is very large and requires patience and persistence to navigate to the specific information you may want.
The Producer Obligations and Expectations page provides a good summary of your obligations.
Other sources of information regarding crop insurance are available online through both Land Grant Universities and crop insurance companies.
Wisconsin specific information can be found through Dr. Paul Mitchell, on his website, or through the Extension Farm Management Program page.
University of Illinois has great information, as well, including their crop insurance premium calculator.
