New Farm Bill includes crop insurance updates

With the 2019 sign-up deadline arriving on March 15, refinements in federal crop insurance from the new Farm Bill were outlined for farmers at the 2019 series of update meetings sponsored by Premier Insurance Solutions LLC.  A policy change for 2019 allows insured farmers to change their elections on the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Risk Coverage (PLC) indemnities for both this year and 2020 and then be able to switch between them in each following year.  Those who choose PLC may be able to update their crop base acres and yields.The fee for catastrophic insurance has been raised from $300 to $655 per policy but “it is not worth it,” Craig Ladwig remarked. He pointed out that any payment would cover only 50 percent of the affected acres at 55 percent of the guaranteed price for the crop.One new provision is the offering of multi-county (they need to be adjacent) enterprise unit policies which serve to reduce the farmer premiums.Although the late 2018 Farm Bill classified industrial hemp as an agricultural product, enabling its commercial production, it is not one of the 130 different crops eligible for crop insurance in 2019.