Graphic: Insurance Spending Gap Between Corn and Other Crops at Widest Ever in 2023

By Mitchell Lierman

Impacted by drought and export disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine, insurance spending for corn versus that for other crops in 2023 grew to its widest-ever gap.

Increases in annual total corn premiums outpaced other highly-insured crops over the past five years. These policy premiums are paid for, in part, by government subsidies, which on average covered 62% of the crop insurance costs for farmers in 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Deadlines to purchase spring-planted crop insurance were one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an open-source project for visualizing world economic data, Ukraine was responsible for 9.3% of global corn exports in 2021.

Corn insurance spending fell in 2023, yet remained near record high

Insurance spending for several crops reached all-time highs in 2022, with earned premiums for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and sorghum doubling from pre-pandemic levels. Spending on the three most insured crops last doubled between 2006 and 2008.