Are you a farmer who participates in the federal crop insurance program?  Interested in how Revenue Protection premiums looked this year and the forecast for next year?

FarmDoc Daily has a great piece this week that you won’t want to miss.  They actually predict crop insurance premiums to be lower next year given the same amounts of coverage which is good news for Illinois farmers stretching their margins thinner and thinner every year.

“For the same projected prices and volatilities, premiums will be lower in 2017 for both corn and soybeans. In 2016, farmer continued to use crop insurance on a high percentage acres and continued to increase use of high coverage levels. Overall, crop insurance in 2017 likely will be similar to that in 2016.”

Members of the Illinois Corn Growers Association continue to rate crop insurance as one of their most valuable tools to manage farms and profitability.  ICGA monitors farmer use and demand of crop insurance products to continually make options the best they can be for Illinois corn farmers.

Some other interesting data from the article:

• In 2016, RMA reported that 10.1 million acres of corn were insured in Illinois, with insurance being used on 87% of the planted acres, roughly the same percentage insured in 2015.
• By far, the most used product in 2016 was RP, with 78.5% of planted acres insured with RP (see Table 2). The next largest used product was Area Risk Plan (ARP) accounting 5.5% of use.
• Use of high coverage levels policies has climbed from near zero use in 1997 to around 80% in 2016 (see Figure 1). Between 2015 and 2016, use of high coverage levels polices increased form 78% of planted acres to 80% of planted acres.

We’d encourage you to click on this link and read the rest of the article for yourself.  Lots of interesting charts on current and forecasted crop insurance trends over there that you might find interesting.