Crop Insurance Basics

While crop insurance isn't new, it is more important than ever to thousands of farmers. The ability to fit the coverage to your individual operation, obtain coverage at a meaningful level and affordable price, secure the coverage from a local insurance professional, like Farm Credit, and know that the coverage is in place and can be counted on for financial planning purposes all combine to make crop insurance the cornerstone of many farmers' financial and risk management plans. These benefits of crop insurance are not new, but they continue to account for the success and acceptance of the program.

Tailor Your Coverage
You can tailor your coverage to fit your own specific operation's needs. You have a choice of coverage levels ranging from 50% up to 75%. Also, numerous coverage plans are available for many crops, including MPCI yield guarantee protection and revenue products that provide yield loss and price protection. These multiple choices of products and coverage levels provide you the opportunity to obtain the coverage that fits your specific operation and risk management needs.

Premiums are Affordable
You are able to purchase crop insurance at more affordable prices because the government shares in the risk and administrative premium costs. The cost sharing by governments makes it possible for many growers to have better coverage than they could afford without the government cost share. This results in affordable protection, while also resulting in manageable cost for taxpayers.

Crop Insurance is Better than Disaster Payments
Unlike disaster payments, crop insurance is predictable. Farmers (and their lenders) know what

There are many types of crop insurance coverages.

Topics	MPCI Multiple Peril Crop Insurance	CRC Crop Revenue Coverage	CAT Catastrophic Coverage	AGR Adjusted Gross Revenue
Benefits	Production-based coverage protects the producer against a yield loss	Guarantees revenue per acre with both upside and downside price protection	Production based coverage protects the producer against a yield loss	Guarantees total farm income
Guarantee	APH* yield X selected level	APH yield X selected level X higher of early or harvest price	APH yield X 50% level	Based on 5 years schedule F. income X coverage level
Losses	Paid when actual yield is less than guarantee	Paid when calculated revenue is less than final revenue guarantee	Paid when actual yield is less than guarantee	Paid when total income falls below the guarantee
Sign up Deadline	March 15	March 15	March 15	Jan 31