By Nick Paulson and Gary Schnitkey et.al
The Risk Management Agency (RMA) of the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) recently released county yields for the 2024 crop year. These yields are used by RMA to determine area plan payments, including for the Supplemental and Enhanced Coverage Options (ECO and SCO). County corn and soybean yields for Illinois were mostly at or above trend levels. Exceptions included counties in southern Illinois for both crops, and some northern Illinois counties for soybeans. Payments from revenue-based ECO and SCO for 2024 corn and soybeans will be triggered in many counties in Illinois and will be prevalent across the U.S. for 2024.
2024 Illinois Corn Yields and Supplemental Plan Payments
Figure 1 shows county corn yields (left panel) and the ratio of yield to expected trend yield (right panel) for Illinois counties in 2024. Both yields are reported by the Risk Management Agency (RMA) and used to determine payments for area plan programs (see the Area Plan Reports in RMA’s Information Reporting System (RIRS)).
Following the typical pattern, corn yields were highest across the central and northern regions of the state, with lower yields in southern counties. Corn yields were generally at or above trend in Illinois in 2024, with exceptions in some counties in southern Illinois and in Marshall county in north-central Illinois.
Table 1 (see end of article) reports 2024 yields and trend yields for corn in Illinois, along with estimates of per acre payments for the ECO and SCO programs. Purchase of ECO and SCO requires use of an underlying individual farm combo plan, and the payment estimates reported in table 1 assume the underlying plan provides revenue coverage. Since the harvest price for corn in 2024 ($4.16) was below the projected price ($4.66), revenue protection (RP) and revenue protection with the harvest price exclusion (RP-HPE) provide the same coverage. More detailed descriptions of the ECO and SCO programs are available in the farmdoc daily articles from November 24, 2020, February 27, 2014, and April 24, 2014.
County yields combined with the insurance price decline result in corn payments being triggered in 43 of Illinois’ 102 counties for 95% ECO coverage and 10 counties for ECO 90% coverage. Payments from SCO, which has an 86% coverage level, will be triggered in 2 southern Illinois counties – Williamson and Union – for corn in 2024. The size of SCO payments will depend on the coverage level of the producer’s underlying plan as well as the severity of the revenue loss, thus table 1 only provides an indicator for whether an SCO payment would be triggered.
Source : illinois.edu