Crop risk management options expanded for Michigan growers

Trend Adjustment Yields option for crop insurance has many alternatives that can help cover some risks faced by today’s farm producer.

For 2012, yet another new crop insurance alternative is being offered to corn and soybean growers in many counties in Michigan. This option, offered in many counties of Michigan, will allow farms to take advantage of trend yields and raise the farm’s insurable yields. Over the past ten years, many farms have seen some good and some great yields that may not yet be reflected in the farm’s APH yields. The use of good crop rotations may leave gaps in the production data for any one crop, like corn or soybeans, which can make it difficult to utilize your farm’s APH yields to reflect some of the production and management improvements that have been taking place. To deal with this issue, a new yield Trend Adjustment (TA) option will be available for farms in selected counties of Michigan for crops like Corn and Soybeans.

A free crop insurance decision tool may help you evaluate the potential value and potential returns that various crop insurance options can provide. In today’s volatile commodity markets, using one of the crop insurance alternatives may help your farm reduce the financial risk of a crop yield failure or severe market price decline. For many farms, crop insurance coverage helps them feel more comfortable and insures that their farm will continue to be viable even if disaster strikes.

The yield TA option allows farms with either four years of corn yields over the past 12 years or four years of soybeans yields over the past 12 years to receive and option to consider a TA yield adjustment. In many cases this option may allow farms to increase their coverage at a reduced cost.

Like so many production and risk management tools, farms with good records will find some of the very best results using this program. The productive, profitable and progressive farms of today have developed good record keeping systems because it makes real dollars and real sense to do so. Maybe 2012 is the year for your farm to upgrade its financial records system. You can contact your local Michigan State University Extension, Farm Management Educator, like Dennis Stein steind@anr.msu.edu, to review some popular and productive farm accounting systems.

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