The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) recently issued a fact sheet explaining the organic Contract Price Addendum — a crop insurance option that allows organic producers to insure their crops at the contract price specified in a guaranteed contract.

The Contract Price Addendum is available for 62 crops.  The list of qualifying crops is included on the last page of the RMA fact sheet.  The Contract Price Addendum is available here.

To qualify to use the contract price as the price election, organic producers must provide a copy of their written contract to their crop insurance agent by the acreage reporting date.  Organic producers can still choose to insure their crops at the published RMA price (either conventional or organic, depending on what is available), rather than the contract price.

The contract price option is one of several policy objectives to improve crop insurance options for organic producers that the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has encouraged USDA to pursue.  We are pleased by the steps USDA has taken so far — including removing the five-percent organic rate surcharge on all crop insurance policies — and with the passage of the farm bill we look forward to the completion of the organic price election series for all crops by 2015.