Oscar Vergara

The biggest driver of crop premium rates set by the RMA for revenue products is price volatility.

COVID-19 impacts the food supply chain and commodity prices.

Every year, farmers in developing countries alter the crop exposure landscape by choosing to plant particular crops. These choices are guided, for the most part, by individual households' annual consumption needs, the availability of on-farm and off-farm employment, and an expectation of the profit that can be had at harvest time from the portion of the crops that will be sold.

The U.S. agricultural sector is having a very interesting year from a meteorological and financial standpoint. Unfortunately there is no precipitation relief for drought-ridden California, but it's not all bad news for crops there. And Nebraska has had a couple of bad hail events so far, but overall the crops in that state are doing all right.

Few lines of business are as complex or as challenging from an underwriting perspective as crop insurance. The sheer number of variables at play—from the impact of the weather across different stages of growth, to the tolerance of different crops to environmental stress, to location-specific farming practices and technological change—make estimating potential crop losses a daunting task.