03/04/08 Potato crop insurance changes for 2008

Farm and Ranch March 4, 2008 About 80 percent of the potato acreage in the Pacific Northwest is insured under the Potato Federal Crop Insurance Corporation's Multi-Peril Crop insurance. Dave Paul, Director of USDA's Risk Management Agency Regional Office in Spokane, says changes that have been in the works for some time are now included in the 2008 crop year provisions. In Basic Coverage for potatoes, Paul says the portion of indemnity paid on for un-harvested production was changed from 80 to 90 percent. He says there are a couple of major changes in the Processing Quality Endorsement. Paul: "We have a new quality standard for chipping potatoes. Also under the processing quality endorsement the rejection clause within the past endorsement has been replaced by a value comparison with a maximum price election. This is important if you have some damaged processing types of potatoes but the processor wants to process the potatoes but the producer receives less value for that crop. In the old provisions the processor actually had to reject the potatoes for the insurance to pay the producer." Those are just a few of the potato coverage changes and Paul recommends growers meet with their crop insurance agent well before the sales closing date coming up March 17th. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.