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NW-OH | Several problems occur at these meetings. The first thing is typically the person giving the meeting wants to get the hell out of there after 50 questions about how a person can get around the hard parts of crop insurance (record keeping, keeping production seperate, changing thier mind after sales closing date, etc.). The second problem arises when the speaker asks that fateful question,"does anyone have a specific APH they would like me to plug in to the calculator?". You can hear a pin drop because no one wants to fess up to having a 135bu. corn APH or a 38bu soybean APH. They also don't want to tip their hand on which policy they carry Optional or Enterprise to everyone else in the room.
By showing the top end of the premium range the agent looks like the hero when your specific premium is less than he showed at the meeting. It also keeps someone from setting in the agent's office madder than a hornet saying, "YOU said it would only be X$ and now it's Y$ you bait and switching SOB!"
My advice is to go to these meetings as an update only (plant dates, cover crops, record keeping, etc.). You have to set with your agent to find out what will work specifically for you and if your agent doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy about your decisions then find one that does.
We just had one of these at our Young Farmers group and even though we're all pretty good pals you could still see the hesitation when the premium calculator came out. Luckily, the guy putting on the meeting used good solid APH numbers for our area and ran through the premium difference between high APH and low APH. It's smaller than you think. I also noticed the GRIP guys just smiled and never said a word. | |
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Crop insurance rant
