Agri-Pulse
Senators urge USDA to restore buy-up coverage for prevented planting
By Noah Wicks
Leaders of the Senate Ag Committee and 17 other senators are asking the Agriculture Department to reverse its decision to remove buy-up coverage on prevented planting.
In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday, the senators said removal of the buy-up coverage option for prevented planting has "caused great concern" among producers. The action would impact over 67 million acres and all covered commodities in 2025 alone, they said.
"Eliminating the option for producers to purchase additional buy-up coverage for prevented planting is troubling, especially at a time when our farmers need access to all risk management tools available to them," they wrote.
Buy-up coverage provides farmers with 5% more coverage than the basic policies available to farmers, but producers that use it elect to pay slightly higher premiums to qualify. According to a Federal Register notice, it is mainly used by farmers in the Prairie Pothole Region in the upper Midwest.
The Federal Register notice, which was signed by USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce, said buy-up coverage for prevented planting was no longer needed "because Congress has a history of addressing wide-spread flooding through ad-hoc disaster assistance." As an example, it pointed to the 2019 supplemental bill which "funded prevented planting 'top-off' payments, providing an additional 10 to 15 percent to eligible producers who had already received prevented planting indemnities."
The senators said in their letter that "while Congress has provided ad hoc disaster assistance for producers who experienced prevented planting losses in the past, this type of assistance is never guaranteed nor able to be relied upon. ..."
"As we work closely with USDA to get producers through this challenging time, we respectfully ask that USDA reverse this decision and allow producers access to the additional prevented plant coverage for 2027 and beyond to help provide a layer of certainty when disasters beyond their control render them unable to plant a crop," the senators wrote.
The senators who signed the letter were Senate Ag Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., ranking member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Tina Smith, D-Minn., John Thune, R-S.D., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Peter Welch, D-Vt., Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Roger Marshall, R-Kan., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., Jim Justice, R-W.Va., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D.