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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
USDA is increasing premium subsidies for the Enhanced Coverage Option, a crop insurance product that provides high levels of area-based yield or revenue coverage.
Ongoing partisan battles over nutrition assistance and Inflation Reduction Act funding have received all the attention but there are plenty of other policy disagreements in the approaches that leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees are taking on a new farm bill.
Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee are proposing to raise Price Loss Coverage reference prices by 10% to 20% depending on the commodity, while also providing increased income protection to growers under the Agriculture Risk Coverage program and crop insurance, according to a section-by-section summary released Friday.
Some Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee are calling for increasing premium subsidies for crop insurance policies that will cover up to 85% of a farmer’s revenue risk without jeopardizing their eligibility for farm bill commodity programs.
Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow says she's "trying to really jumpstart some serious negotiations" on the farm safety net with a proposal to increase premium subsidies for buy-up area insurance policies.
Lawmakers are looking at boosting subsidies for supplemental, area-based crop insurance policies to induce growers to buy higher levels of coverage, which could potentially reduce the demand from farm groups for ad hoc disaster assistance.
Hundreds of interest groups, trade associations, environmentalists and even a few farmers are submitting their ideas for a new farm bill to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees. Not to be outdone, representatives of key California departments recently submitted their own 2023 farm bill recommendations in a letter to chairpersons and ranking members.
A crop insurance policy that was supposed to ensure cotton growers could make do without traditional commodity programs never fulfilled its promise after hitting the market in 2015. But amid sky-high market prices and input costs this year, southern farmers say buying the policy is looking more and more like a no-brainer.