By Jonathan LaPorte
While most of the growing season is now focused on maximizing yields and revenues on 2026 production, we’re not quite done with 2025. USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) released county yield data for the 2025 production year which triggered payments in several county-based insurance policies. Specifically, the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) and Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO) will see payments in some of Michigan’s counties. Which counties receive payments depends on whether yield or revenue were low enough to qualify.
SCO and ECO basics
Both SCO and ECO are additional policies to a farm’s underlying insurance policy. Those policies are either yield protection (YP) or revenue protection (RP), which focus on a farm’s individual yields. The underlying policy determines how payments in SCO and ECO will be calculated. In both cases, county yields are used in place of a farm’s individual yields.
SCO, when based on a yield protection policy, provides coverage for a county once that season’s county yield falls below 86% of the county’s actual production history (APH) or yield history. ECO based on yield protection has two options available to farms. ECO 90 will provide coverage once a county’s yield falls below 90% of the APH yield. ECO 95 will provide coverage once a county’s yield falls below 95% of the APH yield.
For revenue policies, SCO and ECO both use futures market prices to convert yield to revenue values. Base prices are set in March using the average of futures contracts for the month of February.
Source : msu.edu