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RMA yield numbers mean payments for many producers

A professor of farm management at the University of Illinois says many farmers that took the Enhanced (ECO) or Supplemental (SCO) Coverage Options on crop insurance in 2024 will see payments.

Gary Schnitkey says county corn and soybean yield data released by the Risk Management Agency (RMA) will trigger payments in specific areas of the Corn Belt.

“For corn, the payments mainly were in the southeast, and that would begin like at southern Ohio through Kentucky and through Mississippi and anything east of there.”  He says, “And then the western Great Plains also had payments on corn.”

He tells Brownfield it’s easier to identify soybean areas that will not see payments.

“In soybeans there were many more counties that had payments.”  He says, “Southern Iowa, central Illinois, going into Indiana, were the one area where we didn’t see many payments.  Relatively good yields in those areas compared to the rest of the country.”

Schnitkey says the payments vary by county, crop, and coverage level.

In Illinois for example, he says…

“Payments for ECO with 95% coverage in two thirds of the counties for corn and the southern part of the state would have payments on ECO 90% on corn.”  He says, “For soybeans, if we had a 95% coverage level, the vast majority of counties would have had payments, and a little over half of the counties have payments for ECO 90%.  Just to give you a feel here, for soybeans in Sangamon County, for example, the ECO 95% would have made a $70 payment and a $13 payment at the 90% level.  In Logan County, you would have had a $20 payment for 95% and none for 90%. So, there is a range there, depending on what the county yield turned out to be relative to the actual yield.”

He says eligible producers should expect to see 2024 cropping year payments in October.

AUDIO:  Gary Schnitkey – University of Illinois