Federal Crop Insurance Research Articles

Utilizing large‐scale insurance data sets to calibrate sub‐county level crop yields

AbstractCrop yields are crucial for research on agricultural risk and productivity but are typically only available at highly aggregated levels. Yield data at more granular levels of observation have the potential to enhance econometric identification and improve statistical power but are typically inaccessible. Crop insurance contracts offered via the US Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) are priced, in part, based on past yields of the farm meaning year‐to‐year variation in premium rates has the potential to provide insight into how yields vary over time. This paper introduces methods to use observed FCIP rating parameters to calibrate yields for insurance transactions lacking such data. These methods are validated with 148,243 farm‐level observations from Kansas for which yields are known. The calibrated yields are applied empirically to examine the impact of asymmetric information in the FCIP via choice of insurance unit structure and the extent to which legislative changes mitigated this effect.

Evaluation of Federal Crop Insurance Corporation methods to estimate soft winter wheat grain yield in the Eastern United States

Evaluation of Federal Crop Insurance Corporation methods to estimate soft winter wheat grain yield in the Eastern United States

Directional aspects of crop yield correlation: Implications for insurance rating and contract design

AbstractWe estimate directional anisotropic models of linear correlation for crop yields. We find that directional distances (i.e., the degree to which yield correlation decays depending on direction) tend to differ from one another, with east to west distances being “longer” than north to south distances (i.e., correlation tends to decline slower in the east to west direction), at least for the major crops of corn and soybeans. Results for wheat are somewhat ambiguous. However, in all cases, average yield aggregates made up of east to west linked counties tend to be more accurate than is the case for north to south linkages. Implications for rating and contract design in the US area yield federal crop insurance program are offered.

Actuarial implications of prevented planting coverage

AbstractWithin the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP), prevented planting (PP) coverage provides payments for pre‐planting costs associated with crops that ultimately cannot be planted due to adverse weather. PP indemnities, which are not considered production losses within the FCIP rating methodology, influence premium rates differently than typical losses. This study utilizes a panel data set consisting of approximately 77,697 county level observations from RMA's summary of business to identify the relationship between the prevalence of prevent plant use and a number of actuarial related outcomes. Overall, we find that increases in the share of total indemnities attributable to PP claims over the preceding 10 years produce generally negligible changes to loss ratios, but can significantly increase loss ratios among subsets of the FCIP that heavily utilize PP coverage (greater than 20% of total indemnities). This suggests that, despite loss ratios being robust to typical rates of PP claims, actuarial performance can degrade when PP payments are high relative to indemnities from all other perils. Additionally, a simulation is conducted in which prevent plant indemnities are counterfactually treated as production losses when pricing FCIP contracts as opposed to current practice of recovering prevent plant costs via a fixed rate load. Doing so suggests significant improvements in loss ratios for crops that have historically had high shares of prevent plant indemnities, however, these improvements come at the expense of higher premiums and reduced demand for crop insurance.

Insurance, Weather, and Financial Stability

In this paper, we introduce a model to study the interaction between insurance and banking. We build on the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980, which significantly expanded and restructured the decades-old federal crop insurance program and adverse weather shocks—over-exposure of crops to heat and acute weather events—to investigate some insights from our model. Banks increased lending to the agricultural sector in counties with higher insurance coverage after 1980, even when affected by adverse weather shocks. Further, while they increased risky lending, they were sufficiently compensated by insurance such that their overall risk did not increase meaningfully. We discuss the implications of our results in the light of potential changes to insurance availability as a consequence of global warming.

Farm heterogeneity and leveraging federal crop insurance for conservation practice adoption

AbstractCurrent and proposed policies aim to leverage the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) to promote conservation practices. This study uses corn farm‐level survey data to inform the effectiveness of targeting FCIP participants. We implement an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to assess what conservation practices are most common among participants. We find that farms that use crop insurance have higher adoption rates for practices that are generally profit‐maximizing. We also calculate nitrogen balance, a yield‐scaled measure of nitrogen fertilizer's potential environmental impact. We find a positive relationship between crop insurance and nitrogen balance closer to the optimum.

Does crop insurance influence crop yield impacts of warming temperatures? A farm‐level analysis

AbstractWe examine the effects of the federal crop insurance program on crop production under extreme heat using farm‐level data from Kansas. We find that insured dryland corn is 38% more sensitive to extreme heat than uninsured dryland corn. Results also suggest that a uniform C warming scenario leads to yield reductions of 16.7% (11.8%) for insured (uninsured) corn production; and 6.0% (4.4%) for insured (uninsured) wheat production. Warming had a stronger impact with reduced rainfall, especially on insured farms compared with uninsured farms, while altered growing seasons showed potential benefits for wheat but limited improvements for corn.

Race and premium misrating in the U.S. Federal Crop Insurance Program

AbstractUSDA farm support programs have an established history of racial discrimination. Today, the Federal Crop Insurance Program is among the largest and most important programs available to U.S. farmers. Previous research has documented systematic misrating of crop insurance premiums with sizable welfare implications. In this paper, we explore whether producer race measured at the county level has explanatory power in a model of crop insurance misrating. We find that in some cases it does, raising concerns about the possibilities of racially discriminatory impacts of the RMA's rate‐setting methodology. Further research is needed to isolate the mechanisms that explain our findings.

The crop insurance demand response to premium subsidies: Evidence from U.S. Agriculture

Premium subsidies are a common policy tool to promote crop insurance participation in many countries. However, the relationship between subsidies and demand is not entirely obvious given the variation in the use of subsidies and crop insurance participation within the international crop insurance landscape. Focusing on the U.S. Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) demand is modeled as a system of equations representing decisions at the intensive [coverage level] and extensive [net insured acres] margins. The model makes use of an identification strategy that leverages exogenous variation in government-set pricing policy to address potential sources of endogeneity. Applying the model to over one million insurance pool level FCIP observations spanning two decades (2001–2022) suggest an inelastic response at both extensive and intensive margins to changes in producer-paid premium rates with the response to premium rates becoming increasingly more elastic as subsidies decrease. These estimated elasticities are on the low end compared to previous literature, however, significant heterogeneity across commodity, production practices, policy type, and location are observed suggesting subsets of producers are likely to respond to changes in the cost of insurance in different ways.

Crop insurance's impact on commercial bank loan volumes: Theory and evidence

AbstractCrop insurance protects lenders by increasing the likelihood of loan repayment when revenue declines. We develop a theoretical mode that explains the role of crop insurance in agricultural lending and how impacts may be different for lenders that are not specialized in agricultural lending. We then test whether the total volume of production credit extended by commercial banks at the county level increases in response to crop insurance availability and whether the level of the response is related to bank specialization in agriculture. We use a novel difference‐in‐differences strategy based on some counties having a higher share of agricultural production that was not covered by Federal crop insurance in the 1990s. Crop insurance has a robust relationship with increased loan volumes during this period, especially in counties with fewer banks specialized in agriculture.

Premium subsidies and selection in the federal crop insurance program

AbstractUnderstanding how subsidies affect the selection of farms with different risk exposure into insurance products is key to evaluating the efficiency of government‐supported insurance programs. We study the US crop insurance program, which is a major federally supported insurance program, to assess the impact of premium subsidies on the riskiness of the insured. By exploiting two waves of policy changes, we find that the average loss per insured liability falls as premium subsidies increase, which implies that crop producers with lower risk are more responsive to the price of insurance.

Smoky Wine Variety: How Federal Crop Insurance Hinders Grape Growers Affected by Wildfire Smoke

This Note comparatively argues that while both Californian and Australian grape growers lose millions of dollars from crops damaged by wildfire smoke taint, the two countries support and insure their farmers very differently. When both areas of the world are susceptible to the damaging effects of climate change, why are the producers not susceptible to the same type of crop relief? After a careful analysis of the types of insurance the United States and Australian governments offer grape growers, the inequity stands between the systematic approach to insuring citizens against wildfires. In America, federal crop insurance only protects crops touched by the flames of wildfires, whereas, in Australia, the government recognizes the consequential effects of wildfires—smoke taint—and provides relief to their farmers for those crops damaged by smoke. The United States will fall behind the world in the wine industry, and more importantly, the billion-dollar viticulture industry in California will cease to exist, and millions of Americans will lose their jobs, homes, and hope without the support of the federal government. Thus, the United States must reevaluate the long-standing federal crop insurance policies and emulate those policies in Australia so that grape growers may feel overdue relief.

A Bibliography of Key Final Agency Determinations of the United States Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency

This Article is the first law review article to comprehensively examine Final Agency Determinations (FADs) of the United States Department of Agriculture. A key part of the administrative process within the Risk Management Agency of USDA, FADs contribute to the interpretation and understanding of the Common Crop Insurance Policy, which is the federally-reinsured multi-peril insurance contract. This Article surveys ten of the most significant recent FADs and emphasizes the importance of FADs to litigated disputes between insurance providers and insureds with regard to the federal crop insurance program. Overall, understanding of FADs is critical for stakeholders with the multi-peril crop insurance program.

Understanding the effect of cover crop use on prevented planting losses

AbstractCover cropping has the potential to improve resilience of agriculture to climate‐change‐induced extreme weather events. However, rigorous quantitative evidence on the resilience effect of cover crops is still lacking. Using a novel data set that combines satellite‐based cover crop information and county‐level crop insurance data, we examine the impact of planting cover crops on prevented‐planting‐related losses that are typically caused by heavy rainfall events. The US federal crop insurance program offers “prevented planting” coverage, which pays indemnities if insured growers are unable to plant their crop due to adverse weather. Linear fixed effects models, instrument‐based estimation methods, long‐difference models, and a number of other robustness checks are utilized in the empirical analysis to achieve the study objective. Our findings suggest that counties with higher cover crop adoption rates tend to have lower levels of crop insurance losses due to prevented planting. The resulting reduction in prevented planting risk also becomes larger with longer term, multiyear cover crop use. These results support the notion that cover crops improve soil conditions such that the likelihood and magnitude of prevented planting losses decrease. We posit that the ability of cover crops to handle excess moisture (i.e., through better water absorption and improved water infiltration in the soil) is the main factor in its ability to reduce prevented planting losses in the US Midwest.

An Analysis of Federal Crop Insurance in 2018 Farm Bill

An Analysis of Federal Crop Insurance in 2018 Farm Bill

Reevaluating the use of volatility factor in crop insurance premium rating

AbstractThis article reevaluates the use of volatility factors in federal crop insurance rate setting. The analysis focuses on price risk for corn and soybeans over the period 1990–2021. The sensitivity of insurance premiums to changes in volatility is comparable to the sensitivity resulting from changes in crop prices. Risk Management Agency's (RMA) volatility factor is generally supported to be an unbiased and efficient estimator of the realized volatility, although this support is found to be marginal in the case of soybeans. The out‐of‐sample forecasting analysis indicates that RMA's current approach can be modified to better reflect price risk over the insurance period.

Does Finance Make Us Less Social?

AbstractInformal risk sharing within social networks and formal financial contracts both enable households to manage risk. We find that financial contracting reduces participation in social networks. Specifically, increased crop insurance usage decreased local religious adherence and congregation membership in agricultural communities. Our identification utilizes the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act of 1994 that doubled crop insurance usage nationally within a year, although changes in usage varied across counties. Difference-in-difference and Spatial First Difference tests confirm that households substituted insurance for religiosity. This substitution was associated with reductions in crop diversification and crop yields, indicating an increase in moral hazard.

Opportunities to support beginning farmers and ranchers in the 2023 Farm Bill

AbstractBeginning farmers and ranchers represent an important segment of U.S. agriculture, yet they face financial challenges relative to more established operations. This article provides an overview of emerging research on the financial performance of beginning farm and ranch operations, with a lens toward implications for the 2023 Farm Bill. First, we use U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Resource Management Survey data to explore descriptive statistics relative to beginning farm and ranch usage of: local food markets, Federal crop insurance, and financing mechanisms. Subsequently, we leverage a farm‐level panel dataset from the USDA Census of Agriculture and regression analysis to examine the relationship between key financial metrics and beginning farmer success. Results show: (a) beginning farm performance over time is associated with both increases in scale and productivity, as well as participation in agricultural programs, (b) access to credit is important, and that being credit constrained lowers the probability of survival, growth, and success for beginning operations, and (c) beginning operations are significantly less likely to use Federal crop insurance compared to established operations across all scales.

The impact of farm-level variables on federal crop insurance coverage selections

The impact of farm-level variables on federal crop insurance coverage selections

The impact of farm-level variables on federal crop insurance coverage selections

PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between farm-level variables related to cash flow and premium rates on federal crop insurance coverage selection.Design/methodology/approachUsing farm-level data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), the authors estimate a linear fixed effects model to evaluate the relationship between farm-level and regional variables and federal crop insurance coverage selections.FindingsThe authors find evidence indicating that expected cash flow plays an important role in coverage level decisions. For example, variables directly related to cash flow, such as higher costs, are associated with significant differences in coverage level selection, though the direction of the association is dependent on the type of costs, whether fixed or variable, while higher revenue higher acreage farms insure at higher coverage levels. In addition, higher premium costs are associated with lower coverage level selections, despite subsidy incentives.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that identifies a potential solution to the puzzling finding that farmers do not consistently maximize coverage level. This research points to the influence of credit constraints as playing a role in limiting coverage level selections.