The June 1 certification deadline date has been removed from the conservation compliance provisions. Instead, the deadline for filing form AD-1026 with FSA will be the earliest applicable premium billing date. This will allow the conservation compliance certification process for crop insurance to be administered more consistently with the way it is administered for other USDA programs. While this is a welcome and much needed change, please remember that it will apply beginning in 2019 for any commodities with a CCD prior to November 30, 2017.

Unfortunately, RMA also announced that they are removing the Prevented Planting +10 Percent Option (PT). Previously, there has been an option for policyholders of some crops to increase prevented planting coverage by five or ten percent (+5 percent option and +10 percent option, respectively). While RMA has removed the +10 percent option, the +5 percent option is still available. While this change will primarily impact 2018 policies (ELS and Rice), note that it will not apply to crops with a CCD prior to November 30, 2017 until 2019.

In accordance with the guidance published by RMA, Global Ag will notify all policyholders and automatically convert PT coverages to PF for the appropriate crop year based on CCD. If a policyholder does not want PF in place of the PT they must remove the option by the sales closing/cancellation date.

Policyholders may now select different unit structures by practice for either irrigated or non-irrigated practices. Policyholders may now choose an enterprise unit for one practice and the most appropriate unit structure on the other practice, be it a separate enterprise unit or optional or basic units. These changes reduce the burden placed on producers and makes crop insurance more accessible.

10 percent yield limitation (cups) will become an option and will no longer be automatically applied to Actual Production History (APH) yields. A carry-over insured must elect the yield cup option if they wish to prevent an approved APH yield from declining more than 10 percent from one year to the next. Again, because of the staggered implementation this change will only apply in 2018 to crops with a CCD on or after 11/30/2017. For the remaining crops the change will become effective for 2019. We’ll send out additional information about how Global Ag will handle this change in the next few months. 

As required by the Basic Provisions, Global Ag must notify policyholders of these changes. To meet this requirement, Global Ag will be issuing a written notice by mail to all policyholders within the next 30 days. A copy of the letter will be made available for you to review prior to it being sent.