Using Your Historical Yield Data to Build a More Efficient Crop Insurance Policy
As the March 15 crop insurance deadline nears, your renewal process can feel routine. In fact, about 9 in 10 Iowa farmers keep the same crop insurance level from year to year.
However, if you treat this year like any other year, you’re probably leaving money on the table.
A growing number of private options and new, higher subsidies from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act make 2026 a perfect time to re-optimize your coverage.
At AgriFinance Advisors, our crop insurance agents recommend a different approach than just “set it and forget it.” This includes:
- Evaluating your 10-20 year performance history to see your actual needs.
- Making sure your unit structure matches these needs.
- Exploring new private products on the market to combine with federal endorsements.
- Taking advantage of increased federal subsidies to level up your coverage.
Let’s take a closer look at how our agents recommend that you make the most out of your coverage.
Use Your Historical Yield Data to Choose Your Unit Structure
Many farmers now have years (or decades) of performance history on each of their fields. Understanding your yield performance data is one of the biggest ways you can right-size your coverage.
Our agents like to dive deep into this data. One of the first things we look at is your unit structure, specifically whether you are using optional vs. enterprise units. Optional units refer to coverage on a field-by-field basis. Enterprise units refer to crop insurance that’s the same for all fields within a certain county.
Optional units give you more flexibility if one field often performs better or worse than others nearby. But the premiums on these policies are higher. That means it could cost you more money if your field performance is generally the same.
Comparing each of your fields’ production histories with the others will help determine whether they have a high yield correlation. If they often succeed or fail together, you may want to switch to enterprise units.
An agent can help you run this cost-benefit analysis. For example, if all of your fields are at the 80% enterprise unit, you may want to see if it’s worth going up to 85% in optional unit coverage for some fields. You can do this by seeing if the payback you expect to receive would outweigh the extra premium dollars.
Mixing Area Endorsements & Private Products
Once we’ve optimized your unit structure, we’ll look at how to cover the remaining risks beyond your base policy. This could include using a mix of area endorsements and private insurance products.
Area endorsements are federal crop insurance add-ons like the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) and Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO) that go beyond the maximum coverage level of your base policy. These federal options are at a county level, but there are also private products on the market that can provide you with additional coverage and flexibility.
If you’re always selecting the same federal coverage options, you could be missing new private products that give you more advantages. For example, some of our customers benefit from affordable private coverage that raises their level to 95% or 97%.
Combining these types of products helps you personalize your risk management while keeping your premium in check.
This strategy is best done earlier rather than later. Unlike federal plans, some of these private products have capacity limits. If you wait until the March 15 deadline, the best-priced private options may already be “sold out” for your county.
Leveraging the New 80% Federal Crop Insurance Subsidies
Federal legislation passed in July 2025 has changed the math for purchasing crop insurance. Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), this legislation has raised federal subsidies from 65% to 80% for the following products:
- Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO)
- Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO)
- Margin Coverage Option (MCO)
- Hurricane Insurance Protection Wind Index (HIP-WI)
- Fire Insurance Protection Smoke Index (FIP-SI)
This means farmers will pay significantly lower costs for the same amount of coverage. As a result, many farmers can now afford a higher coverage level, like 95%.
Our recommendation as crop insurance agents is to put your savings toward more coverage. This will give you more security and flexibility. It lowers your risk in the short term while keeping the space in your budget for future years.
Make Your Crop Insurance Strategy Work For You
Crop insurance agents should do more than just take your order from a menu of three coverage options. They should be your strategist, helping you work out the best custom package for you.
Want to see the difference? Talk with an AgriFinance agent today.