Crop Insurance 2018: Replay of 2017?

The annual planting debate is starting to heat up.  At the USDA’s annual Ag Outlook Forum, the USDA projected that U.S. producers would plant 90 million acres each of corn and soybeans.  One of the factors that they cited as driving this prediction was the similarity of conditions between last year and this year.

The initial crop insurance price guarantees for corn and soybeans is one of the factors that we watch to get a feel for where plantings might land.  Given that the crop insurance price discovery period for corn and soybeans is rapidly coming to a close, we examine where those guarantees stand and what they might mean for the coming 2018 growing season. (more…)