Ag Policy Blog

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., joined a letter led by leadership of the Senate Agriculture Committee urging USDA to reinstate additional crop insurance for prevented-planting coverage.

In late November, the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. (FCIC) published a new rule "Expanding Access to Risk Protection" that made several changed to crop insurance. Among the changes was a provision that eliminated the ability of farmers to increase their prevented-planting coverage. USDA used to give farmers the option to buy-up prevented-planting coverage by 10%, then scaled that back to 5%. The new rule eliminates the buy-up option for PP.

The rule, published in the Federal Register, said the change was made because buy-up coverage mainly benefits farmers in the Prairie Pothole Region, primarily in the Dakotas.

In a bipartisan letter, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., along with senior committee member Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., led a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins "urging the department to reinstate additional crop insurance coverage for acres prevented from being planted."

The senators cited USDA that removing the buy-up option for prevented planting affects more than 67 million acres across all 50 states and all covered commodities.

"As we work closely with USDA to get producers through this challenging time, we respectfully ask that USDA reverse this decision and allow producers access to the additional prevented plant coverage for 2027 and beyond to help provide a layer of certainty when disasters beyond their control render them unable to plant a crop."

Buy-up coverage provides critical protection for producers when weather events strike, the senators stated. USDA's decision to end prevented-planting buy-up coverage has raised concerns among growers nationwide, the letter stated.

"Eliminating the option for producers to purchase additional buy-up coverage for prevented planting is troubling, especially at a time when our farmers need access to all risk management tools available to them," the senators wrote.

The senators also questioned the FCIC stating that buy-up coverage is not needed because Congress has a history of providing ad-hoc aid when dealing with widespread flooding, such as in 2019 when Congress also provided additional prevented-planting payments to producers. The 2019 legislation and prevented-planting "top-off" payments came after historic flooding that led to an unusually high 19.7 million acres of prevented planting that affected the entire Corn Belt.

The senators noted, ad hoc disaster assistance "is never guaranteed nor able to be relied upon," which is why prevented-planting policies were crafted going back to 1995.

Farm Service Agency (FSA) data on prevented planting for 2025 shows nearly 4.9 million acres went unplanted -- though it is unclear how many of those acres were covered by a prevented-planting policy that included a buy-up.

Along with Boozman, Klobuchar and Hoeven, Thune also signed the letter along with Sens Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, Deb Fisher, R-Neb., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., Jim Justice, R-W.V., Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., Mike Rounds R-S.D., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Tina Smith, D-Minn.

See, "Farmers Lose PP Buy-Up Under New Rule," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

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