03/13/07 Crop insurance deadline this week

Farm and Ranch March 13, 2007 This Thursday March 15th is the final sales closing date for crop insurance on spring seeded crops in the Pacific Northwest. The exception being wheat which had a deadline last fall. Dave Paul of the USDA's Risk Management Agency's regional office says the March 15th deadline applies to such crops as potatoes, spring barley, dry peas, green peas, and grain corn. The 15th is also the sales closing date for Adjusted Gross Revenue Lite coverage which is available in every county in the region. Paul explains a change means farmers who plant spring canola could still get coverage until this week's deadline. Paul: "Originally growers were required to purchase the policy by August 31st regardless of which type was grown, winter or spring. Now if a grower is only growing spring canola they can come in and still purchase insurance coverage up until March 15th of this year for the 2007 crop year." RMA recently announced additional price elections too for various spring planted commodities under Multi-Peril Insurance coverage. They include spring barley, grain corn, spring canola and rapeseed and various dry beans. Also for this spring Paul says there was an expansion of counties covered for some commodities like for safflower in Idaho. And; Paul: "At the request of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council we expanded the garbanzo beans, or chickpea coverage, into Idaho County Idaho, Gilliam County Oregon and Columbia County Washington." So if you haven't checked with your crop insurance agent yet, you have just a couple of days to do it. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.