It’s November, which means colder weather, yards full of leaves to pick up, setting aside important time with family to eat turkey and be thankful, wrapping up harvest, applying fertilizer, and getting in as much tillage as possible. So, of course we should be thinking about our crop insurance decisions for next year, too!
This is the time of year where a grower will be gathering all their production from 2021 and reporting it to their respective insurance specialist. Reporting your production early has many benefits for your agent. The earlier you turn them in, the more time they have to analyze your plan of coverage for next year. This obviously benefits you, the grower, as well. It is important to have updated Actual Producer History (APH) before you meet with your insurance specialist prior to the March 15 sales closing. But this can also help the specialist determine what area plans of coverage are best for your plan, too. With our new Optimum tool, AgCountry has the exclusive process of being able to apply all area plans of coverage to your current plan to see how it works best with your operation.
Supplemental Coverage Options (SCO) and Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO) provide area plans of coverage for a portion of your underlying crop insurance deductible. SCO is available on Price Loss Coverage (PLC) enrolled crops, along with some non-farm program crops. It covers your deductible from your current coverage level on your multi-peril crop insurance up to 86%. You can take anywhere between 50-100% of that coverage. ECO is similar to SCO, expect it covers the deductible from 86% to either 90% or 95% and it is eligible for crops enrolled in both PLC and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC). Both plans use expected and final county yields, projected and harvest prices, and payment factors. Any indemnity is not determined by how your crop performs, but how the county crop performs. Ask your AgCountry insurance specialist for more details on these plans.
Final yields and prices for these plans are not determined until after the next crop year’s sales closing date, which for SCO/ECO is also March 15th. For example, we won’t see the final yields for Walsh County’s 2021 crops until May of 2022.
So, you may ask, “How will I know if I want to sign up for these plans again if I don’t even know how the county numbers figured for last year?” At AgCountry, with our exclusive relationship with Watts & Associates and our program, Optimum, we have the ability to pull reports with production averages from the county you farm in as we go through production reporting season leading up to March 15. We can determine what the county averages are leading towards based off the production we’ve taken in already. These numbers may not end up fully predicting the final total, but it will be very close to the outcome. This is an important tool to have when discussing area plans of coverage with the grower and how they can positively correlate to your overall crop insurance plan.
It’s important to get your production in early for not only your own APH and crop insurance plan, but also to help determine the county average, which will make your choice of deciding on these area plans of coverage much easier. Visit with your AgCountry insurance specialist today about SCO and ECO.