News

A risk of planting early

With the unseasonably warm, early summer like weather farmers have already started planting corn.  

Indiana Farm Bureau’s director of crop insurance Jim Rink says when a farmer purchases federal crop insurance there is a beginning date when a farmer can plant corn.  “If a farmer plants corn early; and something happens to that corn,” he says, “like frost, or freeze, or wet weather; their federal crop policy would not pay that claim.”

He tells Brownfield by planting before that earliest planting date, farmers risk their coverage.  “With federal crop insurance there is replant coverage and prevented plant coverage,” he says.  “If the seed is planted before that date and the farmer has to replant there simply would be no coverage under the federal crop insurance policy.”

Rink says if the crop were to survive the early spring plantings – other perils would be covered later on in the crop year.

For the earliest planting date in your state, Rink says to contact your crop insurance agent.