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Crop Talk

by Dave Taylor
Insurance Specialist

Agriculture producers are constantly faced with decisions that affect financial success. Crop insurance is definitely one of those decisions. This time of year you are calculating seed, fertilizer, fuel, herbicide, insecticide, cost of equipment, interest expense, land cost and other factors that determine cost per acre. Your crop Insurance Specialist can help compare that per acre cost to crop insurance coverage.

We all know that the base prices for RA and CRC are being determined in the month of February and will be significantly lower than they were a year ago. A lot of producers are thinking about a lower premium, but will the lower guarantees cover your input cost? Are you faced with any “carry over”debt from last year’s input costs? These are questions you must ask yourself if you have not already. The Sales Closing Deadline for making any changes to your Crop Insurance Policy is March 16, 2009.

Most of you have been to numerous trade shows, seed meetings and risk management seminars and have a general understanding of what is going on in 2009. Almost every farm publication has had more than one crop insurance article, but until you sit down with your Crop Insurance Specialist and look at your yield history and coverage level and how that will calculate out to your per acre guarantee, your decision-making tasks are not complete. RMA will be releasing the approved prices in early March and at that time, we can give you an accurate premium quote.

If you did not attend one of our Crop Insurance Producer meetings, I would like to touch on some of the changes for 2009.

  • Starting with the 2009 crop year there is now a 200% increase limit on how high the Harvest Prices can move on both RA and CRC. The only difference between these two products is the cost of the insurance and the dates the Harvest Prices are established.
  • Also new for 2009, the CAT Fees have increased from $100 to $300 per crop/per county. If you have a landlord with CAT coverage on a small unit, they probably should consider a buy-up policy to maximize their insurance coverage/cost.
  • The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation Board approved Kansas as one of the additional states eligible to receive a premium rate reduction under the new Biotech Endorsement Program (BE). You are eligible for the discount if you plant a qualifying hybrid with advanced seed technologies. Eligibility requirements include but are not limited to planting at least 75% of the total insured corn acreage in the unit. This includes any replanted acreage but excludes acres designated as high-risk in the actuarial documents and must be corn planted for grain.

Please don’t hesitate to call one of your Frontier Farm Credit Crop Insurance Specialists, toll free at (888) 598-8329 to understand all the benefits and requirements of the BE program and see how our mapping services can help with the management of reporting these acres and receiving your premium reduction. Our specialists have a complete understanding of all the requirements and paperwork necessary so you do not miss out on this discount.

As always, Frontier Farm Credit appreciates your business and we look forward to visiting with you about your crop insurance and risk management decisions.

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