The Risk Management Safety Net: Market Penetration and Potential

V. Market Penetration of Principal Crops Near 89 Percent

Efforts to improve market penetration for the principal crops have been very successful with nearly 89 percent of all acres insured in 2015, up 4 percent, or nearly 8.7 million acres, from 2011 and up 15 percent, or nearly 35.5 million acres, from 2000. These increases were in barley, grain sorghum, peanuts, rice, soybean, and tobacco acres. Insured acres increased more than U.S. expansion of crop acres in most cases. The following table shows the changes in NASS and insured acres for the principal crops.

Many changes to the Federal crop insurance program have been made since 2000, including improvements to existing insurance products, increased availability of products and new kinds of revenue coverage. Some of the new types of products include the new Margin Protection, the Supplemental Coverage Option, and the Stacked Income Protection program. Some of the changes to existing programs include more organic practice and price availability, the ability to insure contracted prices, trend yield adjustment, and the ability to exclude yields that are exceptionally low from the historic crop yield averages.

Early in the history of the Federal crop insurance program, the majority of efforts to improve market penetration were focused on these principal crops because they are widely grown in the U.S. In the mid 1990’s, public policy was directed successfully to encourage participation in Federal crop insurance to avoid the need for ad-hoc disaster assistance. Market penetration of the principal crops is shown in the table below:

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