The following checklist will help you to determine if AGR-Lite crop insurance is right for your farm operation. Once you have completed the checklist, click on other links to read producer profiles to learn how AGR-Lite has benefited producers in a variety of production and marketing scenarios. The FAQ’s link will take you to a series of questions and answers that frequently been asked of the NYS Crop Insurance Program Consultants.
Other links will take you to articles of interest, including USDA-RMS (Risk Management Study) , NYSDAM, Cornell University Department of Applied Economics and Management, and the USDA premium calculator.
If you answer yes to any of these questions, then AGR-Lite crop insurance may be right for you.
Are you:
- A small scale producers with a diversified crop plan?
- A producer of multiple crops that do not have a crop insurance program, such as many fruits and vegetables, bedding plants?
- A producer of livestock and livestock products?
- An organic producer of crops or livestock?
To qualify for AGR-Lite insurance, the following is necessary:
- Reside in New York State, except in Westchester, Nassau and counties within New York City.
- Farming operations that have five consecutive years of farm tax records.
- Adjusted gross revenue of $2 million or less.
- Potato income cannot exceed 83% of total revenue.
- Commodities purchased for resale must be less than half of total sales revenue.
- A two year cropping history.
Consider the following when deciding if AGR-Lite is right for your farming operation:
- Growers who direct market their crops receive revenue protection based on the higher value of retail sales.
- If your income over the last five years has been erratic due to weather, fluctuating markets and/or fickle markets, AGR-Lite protects revenue losses caused by natural disasters and market losses.
- Organic practices are considered good agricultural practices
- Indexing is available to account for increasing revenue of a growing farm operation.
- Diversification is rewarded with lower premiums and higher coverage options.
- Producers with poor or no yield records are not excluded from the program.
- AGR-Lite coverage can be combined with multi-peril single crop insurance programs.
- The premium is subsidized by about 50%.
- AGR-Lite does not cover post production expenses of value added products.
- Custom hire machine work, land rent, timber and forest products, animals for sports, show or pets are not included in the program.
What constitutes a loss?
- Unavoidable market losses, such as:
- Rainy weather during the spring causes a loss in retail sales.
- Oversupply in the market caused low prices for your products
- Poor quality that reduces product prices.
- Unavoidable weather losses, such as:
- Wet spring so you could not plant all your fields.
- Hail storm damaged the crop (or drought).
- Your well runs dry during a drought and you cannot water your plants,
- No electricity, so your cooler did not work and spoils your crops.
What does NOT constitute a loss?
- Avoidable causes: negligence, mismanagement or wrongdoing, such as:
- Your irrigation system breaks down and your crops die.
- Other mechanical failures.
- Employee wrong-doing.
- Not following “accepted production practices”.
- Theft.
