Barley Growers Insurance

Barley growers, you have until March 15 to purchase crop insurance for spring grain crops. I’ll tell you why that’s so important in a minute. Breaking news: If you are a barley producer, you now have an option to insure your entire crop for the full contract value. This is a brand new program and insurance agents just learned about the program at the beginning of February. Traditionally, there has been insurance for specialty barley but producers could only insure for the standard feed barley price. With the new program, if you have a contract for specialty barley you can insure up to that contract price. Rick Williams, Risk Management Specialist with the USDA Risk Management Agency defines specialty barley: “If I have a contract that says it’s a hulled barley, or waxy hulless barley, or hulless barley, or malt barley, those meet the definition of a specialty barley. Something other than feed barley. The Idaho Barley Commission worked with the National Barley Growers Association to develop the idea for a specialty barley insurance program. The Risk Management Agency hired a contractor to study the proposal and the program was launched in November.