10/10/07 Multi-Peril Deadlines

Multi-Peril Deadlines. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It's that time of year again to purchase your Multi-Peril Crop Insurance for the 2008 growing season. Jo Lynne Seufer, USDA's Risk Management Specialist reminds Pacific Northwest producers that deadlines are coming up. SEUFER: Well we actually have two closing dates. For our perennial fruit crops it's November 20, 2007 which this year falls on a Tuesday which is kind of nice for producers and the pasture-rangeland-forage pilot, now that's Idaho and Oregon only, that does fall at the very end of the month  Friday, November 30th. There are a number of crops that have expanded crop insurance programs according to Seufer. SEUFER: One of the positive aspects of this years' 2008 crop coming up is we had a lot of demand from producers in additional counties for our products that included apples  Morrow County and in Washington Columbia County; they're going to have the ability to get apple insurance and grapes, that falls into several Idaho counties of Ada, Elmore, Owyhee, Payette and Washington Counties. Pears  that's another one that had a lot of request for expansion and we did that again in Oregon, Morrow County and Washington Columbia County. That expansion has made things a bit easier for producers. SEUFER: What that means is those producers don't have to request a written agreement which does take a lot more paperwork and now that that program is available there the insurance agent can write them a policy directly. Producers use multi-peril crop insurance in the case of a natural disaster but Seufer says there are many different kinds of disasters. SEUFER: Wildlife, drought, hail, flooding; there several initiatives, it depends on the policy. Multi-Peril even in some policies includes our revenue which are increasing more and more with a lot of interest from our farmers because revenue risk seems to be one of the most volatile risks that a farmer has to deal with. With only about a month left before the deadline Seufer recommends getting in touch with your insurance company. SEUFER: Contact their crop insurance agent or if they have a need to find a crop insurance agent we have a listing on our RMA website at www.rma.usda.gov. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.