To curb rising costs, some farmers are tempted to be a bit more careful with inputs. If you fall into that camp, would there be any impacts to crop insurance if you need to file a claim?
Scott Schmidt, crop insurance manager with GreenStone Farm Credit Services, has been doing his own research, talking with USDA RMA and approved insurance providers. He’s learned there’s no black and white answer to this situation.
“Yes, there are good farming practices we have to follow as producers, and [those] include feeding your plants with nitrogen or fertilizer,” says Schmidt. “What it boils down to is are we using enough? Are we doing everything we can to grow a crop?”
Crop insurance takes a grower’s 10-year history into account. Schmidt says he doesn’t know of any adjuster who would see yield loss of 10 bushels per acre and immediately question nitrogen use.
“If we have a grower who typically puts down 175 pounds of nitrogen per acre and they cut back to 150, we’re probably not going to see that big of a difference in production, so there will be no issue there,” he says. “If we see a grower that typically puts down 175 pounds and they go down to 100 pounds of N and we see a significant decrease, there could potentially be red flags thrown by the RMA. But that’s still highly unlikely.”
GreenStone agents would classify a significant yield loss being between 35 and 50 percent. But other factors can come into play.
“At the same time, a lot of it is going to be weather-dependent,” says Schmidt. “Coming into this year, a lot can happen. If we cut down on N and we have a dry summer, we could see significant loss in yield, but we can attribute that to a drought in the area. There are many different factors to it—that’s why we consider it a gray area.”
Schmidt recognizes this year’s input picture is an anomaly, but he encourages good farming practices, as does RMA.
A USDA spokesperson issued the following statement to Michigan Ag Today:
“When considering crop selection and general crop management decisions, producers should be sure to consider good farming practices as they pertain to crop insurance. A host of factors go into determining what constitutes good farming practices, but generally a farmer needs to undertake the production methods utilized to produce the insured crop and allow it to make normal progress toward maturity and produce at least the yield used to determine the production guarantee or amount of insurance. Since circumstances vary based on each situation, producers should consult with local agriculture experts to help advise them on making decisions.”
For the full conversation with Schmidt, listen to the April 4, 2022 edition of the Michigan Ag Today Podcast in the player below.
