Crop Insurance Tools
The 2024 iFarm Crop insurance Premium Calculator allows users to develop highly customized estimates of their crop insurance premiums, and compare revenue and yield guarantees across all available crop insurance products and elections for their actual farm case.
The 2024 iFarm Crop Insurance Payment Evaluator provides helpful information to producers comparing costs and risk reductions across their available crop insurance alternatives.
This program calculates premiums, evaluates insurance payments, and provides historical data useful when making crop insurance decisions for multiple crops. Estimates are for crops in midwest and southeast states. Learn more on the farmdoc Daily crop insurance archive.…
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This program calculates crop insurance historical use and performance back to 1996. …
The cover crop project seeks to provide farmers with a practical web-based decision support tool designed to help manage cover crops in their fields. The project makes use of existing research to demonstrate the potential for cover crops, as well as providing useful information for decision making and management of this practice. It will also seek to apply future research on cover crops as results are incorporated into updates and new iterations of the tool. This remains a work in progress with a goal towards adapting with the science.
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Margin Coverage Option (MCO) Historical Analysis
The Margin Coverage Option (MCO) is a new area-based crop insurance endorsement. In Illinois, corn and soybeans are eligible for MCO coverage. The sales closing date for MCO coverage for the 2026 crop year is September 30th 2025 and is approaching quickly. This article provides some perspective on MCO by comparing it to the Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO).
A New Area-Based Crop Insurance Product: MCO (Margin Coverage Option)
For the 2026 crop year, a new crop insurance endorsement called Margin Coverage Option (MCO) is available. MCO is an area-based product protecting against operating margin declines driven by falling output prices, rising input costs, or both. In Illinois, corn and soybeans are eligible crops to purchase MCO. The sales closing date for MCO coverage for the 2026 crop year is Sept. 30 2025. This article provides an overview of this new policy and discusses considerations in assessing its purchase.
Crop Insurance, 2025 Farm Bill, and Mission Creep
The modern US crop insurance program has undergone substantial mission creep since its creation by the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980. Coverage levels, Federal premium subsidy rates, and types of risk covered have all increased. Of particular note, the offering of ECO insurance starting with the 2021 crop year and the 2025 Farm Bill increase in SCO coverage to 90% with an 80% subsidy rate point to crop insurance policy entering a new chapter: publicly subsidized management of price risk.
The farmdoc Crop Insurance section offers iFARM online tools including the Premium Calculator, Payment Evaluator and Price Distribution Tool. These tools are updated annually during the Spring crop insurance election period.