USDA Offers New Crop Insurance Pilot Program for Nursery Crops in 2021

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency has issued the following news release:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA) announced a new crop insurance pilot program, Nursery Value Select (NVS), for crop year 2021. NVS is another crop insurance option for nursery crop producers, including those growing hemp, in addition to the Nursery crop insurance program.

NVS is available in select counties in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington to persons operating nurseries that meet certain criteria. The deadline to purchase NVS insurance, or the Sales Closing Date, is May 1, 2020, for Alabama, Florida, New Jersey and Texas and September 1, 2020, for Colorado, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington.

"We're happy to introduce a new insurance option for nursery producers," RMA Administrator Martin Barbre said. "We look forward to working with producers to fine-tune this new pilot program over time and welcome all feedback."

NVS was developed with input from nursery producers. The pilot program is based on the existing Nursery crop insurance program, with these changes:

* Simplification of the application and annual policy renewal process;

* Allowing nursery producers to select the dollar amount of coverage that best fits their risk management needs, and for buy-up policies; coverage tailored by an individual practice (container or field grown) or by choosing from any of 10 potential plant categories;

* A simplified loss adjustment process that uses a more accurate approach to determining plant values by placing greater reliance on the nursery producer's actual sales receipts, along with increased producer participation in determining damaged plants' ability to be marketed or rehabilitated;

* Elimination of a plant list based on third-party software and greater reliance on the producer's inventory records, along with plant category naming conventions more familiar to the nursery industry;

* Tailored program dates that are better suited to the agronomic and industry nursery management practices in different regions across the country; and

* A new Occurrence Loss Option (OLO), moving the deductible from a unit level to a plant level for an additional premium (only available for buy-up policies).

USDA has also announced an insurance coverage option for hemp growers for the 2020 crop year, including through Whole Farm Revenue Protection and the Multi-Peril Crop Insurance pilot. Crop insurance is sold and delivered solely through private crop insurance agents. A list of crop insurance agents is available at all USDA Service Centers and online at the RMA Agent Locator. Learn more about NVS at: www.rma.usda.gov/Topics/Nursery.