Organic and aquaculture producers can soon benefit from updates to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Whole-Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) plan. USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) is revising the plan of insurance to make it more flexible and accessible to producers beginning in crop year 2022.

“These improvements to the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection program will make it a better risk management tool for producers,” said RMA Acting Administrator Richard Flournoy. “USDA is committed to equity in program delivery, and this includes specialty crop, organic, and aquaculture producers, who will benefit from these enhancements to WFRP.”

Changes to WFRP include:

• Increasing expansion limits for organic producers to the higher of $500,000 or 35 percent. Previously, small and medium size organic operations were held to the same 35 percent limit to expansion as conventional practice producers.

• Increasing the limit of insurance for aquaculture producers to $8.5 million. Previously aquaculture producers were held to a $2 million cap on expected revenue, this change allows more aquaculture producers to participate in the program.

• Allowing a producer to report acreage as certified organic, or as acreage in transition to organic, when the producer has requested an organic certification by the acreage reporting date. This allows organic producers more flexibility when reporting certified acreage.

• Providing flexibility to report a partial yield history for producers lacking records by inserting zero yields for missing years. Previously, missing a year of records would cause the commodity’s expected value to be zero, meaning past revenue from the commodity would contribute nothing to the insurance guarantee.

WFRP provides a risk management safety net for all commodities on the farm under one insurance policy and is available in all counties nationwide. Producers purchased more than 2,000 policies to protect $2.26 billion in liabilities in 2020.

This insurance plan is tailored for any farm with up to $8.5 million in insured revenue, including farms with specialty or organic commodities (both crops and livestock), or those marketing to local, regional, farm-identity preserved, specialty, or direct markets.

Insurance for Specialty Crop and Organic Producers

The number of agricultural producers who purchase crop insurance for their specialty and organic crops continues to climb, which USDA attributes to its work with producers and agricultural groups in recent years to create new crop insurance options.  Learn more in our August 26, 2021 news release.