Crop Insurance FAQs

Crop insurance works to protect farmers and ranchers from natural disasters, loss of production and loss of revenue from decreasing commodities prices. Farmers and ranchers need federal crop insurance and crop hail insurance to protect their bottom line to ensure they can meet financial and family obligations and support their farm operation.

The High Risk options are as follows:

• Insure the High Risk acres on a High Risk policy signed by sales closing deadline (March 15). 
• To exclude the high risk acres by signing the High Risk Land Exclusion by the sales closing deadline (no coverage for these acres).
• To exclude the high risk acres by signing the high risk land exclusion by sales closing deadline and then adding a Catastrophic (CAT) coverage for those high risk acres by sales closing deadline.
• To submit a "Request for Actuarial Change" to try and get RMA to lower the rate.
• To sign the High Risk-Alternate Coverage Endorsement (HR-ACE) by sales closing deadline (March 15). This option allows you to exclude the high-risk land from the base policy and buy a higher level of individual coverage than CAT on this excluded high-risk land. The coverage must be at a lower level than the non-high-risk land and is by crop by county basis.
• As always check with your local crop representative to see if you qualify.

The Federal Crop sales closing deadline is the last date to apply for coverage or change coverage for any federal crop insurance policy. The date is March 15 each year. Review our Review our crop insurance dates and deadlines for more information throughout the year.

Revenue Protection (RP) insurance protects for a certain level of revenue rather than just production. It protects you from declines in both crop prices and yields. The protection is based on market prices and your APH (Actual Production History).

Revenue Protection policies can be written so that the level of the revenue protection is determined solely by the February futures prices (base prices), and does not increase even if the futures price rises by harvest (harvest prices).

You may elect to purchase insurance without the harvest price option (RP-HPE). The RP-HPE policy carries a lower premium than the RP policy. A claim for indemnity uses the harvest price to determine your harvest revenue.

Learn more about the different federal crop insurance products available.

This review process is typically done during harvest season. This will take place if you have a loss exceeding the threshold of $200,000 for a specific crop in a specific county. The purpose of the review is to validate reported production, which means a variety of documents can be utilized. This includes settlement sheets, load records, bin measurements, loss papers, livestock feeding records or other approved records that would verify acres and production. 

Your main responsibility is to provide three years of verifiable production evidence for the units of the crop being reviewed. Claims for the current crop year will not be paid until this process is complete. This could delay receiving a payment at a time when many farmers have cash flow constraints resulting from the drought. 

APH Certification is an option provided exclusively by COUNTRY Financial to help the review process go smoothly. APH Certification is a process where our local claims adjusters take your yield and policy data and certify your production each year (even if you don't have a loss).

This certification process provides the RMA with verified, certified production that creates a smooth and simpler process for you. No need to dig through years of scale tickets, hunt for settlement sheets or figure out why the yield monitor doesn't match. This certified APH is reviewed and maintained with your COUNTRY records. In other words, peace of mind for you if selected for a review. 

The Yield Cup option is an election that prevents your Actual Production History (APH) from dropping more than 10 percent in a given single year. This optional feature is a great tool to prevent adverse effects from drought and other damages impacting your APH. 

For example, if you have a 200-bushel APH and in a drought your corn yields 100 bushels, your APH cannot fall by more than 20 bushels preserving your yield guarantee for future crop years. 

Federal Crop premium statements will be mailed out in September each year and are due at the end of the month. If they are not paid by the end of the month interest will be charged each month at 1.25% until they are paid.