2025 FYI & Private Products
Below you’ll find information on some of the newer programs to crop insurance, beyond the basic policy, that may be worth considering. These options and add-ons can increase your likelihood to collect a loss and further protect your operation in an abnormal year.
This information is meant to give you a basic understanding of the programs that are out there, but this list is in no way comprehensive. If you see a product that interests you, be sure to get in touch with us to discuss it in more detail and let us help you determine if it is right for you! 800-660-8674
Yield Modifying Options
Trend Adjustment (TA)
Yield Exclusion (YE)
Quality Loss (QL)
Private Products
Replant Option (RO)
Late Plant Option (LPO)
Added Price Option (APO)
Revenue Protection Policy (RPP)
Yield Modifying Options
The three options described below are typically used all together to increase your yield above your simple average. They each use different mechanisms to increase your average yield and guarantee for small cost to premium.
You can often increase your guarantee to an amount comparable to the next highest coverage level for less than the cost of raising your level.
However, these options apply on a farm-by-farm basis and aren’t necessarily beneficial. In some cases, adding these options can result in wildly different coverage and premiums depending on which farms you plant in a given year. Additionally, RMA may declare new year’s disasters which can affect how the options interact with your policy.
For this reason, we never add yield modifying options without a focused review of your history and their effect on your coverage and premium. If you insure with us, we will look at whether these options are worth adding to your policy every year and will consult with you if they would help and are not already on your policy.
Yields Exclusion Option (YE)- Excludes low yields from past years designated by RMA. With this option you can raise your average yield and guarantee at the cost of a higher premium. Usually, it is more advantageous simply to go to the next highest coverage level.
Trend Adjustment Option (TA) - Gives older yields a small boost in order to reflect improvements in farming practices and seed productivity. The more years it has been in production, the larger the increase to that farm's average yield. The option effectively provides slightly higher coverage on qualifying farms, but in most cases, you are better off going to the next highest level for a few more dollars per acre.
Quality Loss Option (QL) - If during the process of working a covered loss, your production was reduced due to quality damage, the Quality Loss Option revises the production in your database for that year to the gross harvested bushels (pre-reduction). The result is an increased yield for that year.
Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO) & Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO)
ECO and SCO are both area coverage options that pay based on county production and revenue rather than your own. We typically recommend increasing your base coverage to the 80%-85% levels and maximizing coverage on your own crop before considering area level coverages.
Gives county level area coverage. ECO covers from 87% of the counties expected yield/revenue up to 90% or 95% depending on the level you choose.
SCO covers from the upper limit of your individual coverage level to 86% of the counties expected yield and/or revenue. (If you have the 70% level, SCO will give county coverage starting at a 86% loss down to a 71% loss)
May not have both HIP-WI and ECO!
Livestock Revenue Protection (LRP)
LRP insures a producer’s cattle or swine against a decrease in national market prices. Choose how many cows or swine you wish to insure for a coverage period ending near when you intend to take them to market. LRP is an excellent tool for mitigating the effect of falling national prices on your profit margin.
Coverage is based on Daily Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Published Prices.
Losses are paid if CME price at end of endorsement is less than your coverage price.
The actual price you sell for does not matter. LRP does not cover local market prices, only changes on CME. However, changes in national prices usually reflect local trends.
Coverage Options vary from 13 to 52 weeks for Feeder and Fed Cattle.
Pasture Hayland Forage Rainfall Index (PRF)
PRF pays losses if the area your land is located receives less than 90% of its expected rainfall over two-month intervals that you select. You can choose how much of your pasture or hay land you want to insure each year and premiums are usually around $4/acre for pasture and $15/acre for hay land for approximately ten times that amount of coverage.
PRF payments come 2-3 months after the intervals that were insured, and typically it is best to choose autumn and winter month intervals as they tend to have more erratic rainfall than summer months which are consistently dry. Because of this, PRF will not necessarily pay off in years when you have a drought and need money to buy feed for your livestock. However, over 10-, 15-, and 20-year periods, PRF tends to pay 2-3 times the amount of premium that it costs. For this reason, we suggest looking at these policies as a fairly reliable long-term investment tool rather than traditional insurance.
· Rainfall is tracked based on a 17-mile square grid system set by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center (NOAA CPC) data.
· Generally, it pays several times more than your premium costs over 10 or more years.
· Choose two or more 2-month long intervals to insure.
· We analyze historical data to help you choose the most likely intervals to have pay out.
Hurricane Insurance Protection - Wind Endorsement (HIP-WE)
Hurricane and Tropical Storm Coverage (HIP-WI) Hurricane Coverage pays if sustained winds and rainfall from a named storm in your county or an adjacent county hit a certain benchmark. If an event occurs, then a loss is automatically filed, and the coverage pays out its maximum amount for Hurricanes and half of that for tropical storms.
Premiums vary based on the hurricane/tropical storm risk in your county and your underlying coverage level, but it’s typically under $2-$3/acre in western North Carolina.
The 2024 hurricane season caused massive crop damage in NC, and the HIP-WI payments in addition to underlying crop insurance helped many growers. We recommend everyone consider adding Hurricane and Tropical Storm to their policy.
Private Products
Replant Option (RO)
Replant payments on corn and soybeans are generally around $30/acre.
RO offers up to an additional $50/acre, allows replant payments for early planted acres, and pays even when minimum acreage requirements are not satisfied for your underlying MPCI Policy.
Late Plant Option (LPO)
LPO is available for Corn, Cotton, and Soybeans and prevents your coverage from dropping up to 10% when there is a reduction due to late planting.
LPO is not available on double cropped acres.
Revenue Supplement Policies
In addition to Federal Multiple Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI), RCIS offers a number of private, unsubsidized insurance products that you can use to supplement your existing insurance. At lower coverage levels (65% and below) it generally makes more sense to increase your MPCI coverage than to invest in these supplemental policies.
However, if you have a higher coverage level already and would like to increase your protection, these private products can offer more coverage for less premium than an 85% MPCI Policy.
Added Price Option (APO)
APO allows you to add value to the insured commodity. (Example: add $0.60 to corn $4.60 price election to insure at $5.20/bu). APO requires that you have a bushel loss in order to pay an APO indemnity, but it pays out each bushel that you are under your bushel guarantee at the higher price.
You are also able to collect on an Optional Unit basis for APO even if your underlying policy is under Enterprise Units. In this case, each bushel that you are under your bushel guarantee for an individual farm would pay out the APO price supplement ($0.60 in the above example) even if there wasn’t a loss on the underlying policy.
Revenue Protection Policy (RPP)
RPP is similar to APO in that you add to the price election for the insured commodity and can pay out on an OU basis even if the underlying policy is EU. The main difference is that it also pays out in the event of a revenue loss and does not require a bushel loss. Standard RPP coverage may not pay out if the Harvest Price increases unless you add the Harvest Price Option (HPO).
You can not have RPP at the same time as ECO for a given Crop.
Both products add value to the insured commodity, but the way they pay out is different. RPP increases the threshold at which a loss is triggered whereas APO increases the amount you are paid in the event of a bushel loss. If the harvest price decreases, you would collect the full amount of an RPP policy simply by meeting your underlying coverage guarantee. To get the same full payout from an APO policy, you would need to harvest 0 bushels on the unit.