Handling Deferrals With Revenue Insurance Policies

The widespread drought in 2012, reportedly the worst since 1936, has focused attention on crop insurance and how to handle policy recoveries with a revenue insurance component.1 Agreements with crop insurance companies that provide for payments without regard to actual losses of the insured do not constitute insurance payments for the “destruction or damage” to crops as required for deferral of the proceeds to the year following the year of crop loss.2 Legislation was introduced in 1997 to make insurance contracts under the Federal Crop Insurance Act featuring revenue assurance eligible for deferral but that legislation was not enacted.