Risk Management Agency Removes 5 Percent Prevent Plant Buy-Up Coverage

The day after Thanksgiving, November 28, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency (RMA) announced the removal of the 5 percent prevented planting buy-up coverage option many South Dakota farmers rely on and purchase each year as part of their farm's crop insurance coverage.

"Five percent may not sound like a lot, but it makes a big enough difference when disaster strikes and acres can't be planted that most farmers I know purchase this crop insurance option," explained Doug Sombke, a fourth-generation Brown County farmer and President of South Dakota Farmers Union.

Providing farmers and ranchers with a strong safety net is important to the state's largest agriculture organization and it is part of the grassroots policy members vote on each year.

The reason? "We need to protect our nation's food supply," Sombke explained. "At a time when many family farmers are struggling to survive low commodity prices due to the Trade War and other factors, this administration has taken away portions of the crop insurance safety net from farmers in the Dakotas."

Due to the Prairie Pothole landscape, where crop acres don't always dry up enough to plant following winter's snowmelt or spring rains, Sombke said on his family farm, like many across the Dakotas, there is nearly always a handful of acres that they end up receiving prevent plant coverage on because they are not able to plant crops due to Mother Nature.

"In fact, 2025 was the first growing season in a long time when we did not need our prevent-plant coverage because we had such an open winter," Sombke said.

Sombke noted that the fact that many farmers from North and South Dakota rely upon the 5 percent buy-up prevented planting crop insurance option is not lost on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's RMA team.

He read the passage under item VI on the RMA website : (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/28/2025-21482/expanding-access-to-risk-protection-earp)

"Prevented planting is a de facto coverage in all crop insurance policies. Increased coverage above the basic level, referred to as "buy-up" coverage, is an option that is provided administratively by RMA in annual notifications. Producers that elect buy-up coverage pay a slightly higher premium to qualify for an indemnity payment that is 5 percent more than the basic coverage. However, the buy-up coverage is mainly benefitting farmers in the Dakotas seeking to plant in the Prairie Pothole Region, where the majority of prevented planting crop insurance payments are made. This is no longer needed because Congress has a history of addressing wide-spread flooding through ad-hoc disaster assistance, such as the 2019 Supplemental bill that funded prevented planting "top-off" payments, providing an additional 10 to 15 percent to eligible producers who had already received prevented planting indemnities."

"Being singled out does not seem right. One-size does not fit all," Sombke said. "And the reasoning that ad-hoc disaster assistance will fill the need is not true. Gratefully, a year of flooding like 2019 does not happen very often. But that is not to say that a field here or there doesn't flood every year. I have seen it where there are times when I will be in my fields planting, but my neighbor less than a mile away can't get into their fields."

Although the ruling was announced November 28, and it became effective November 30, 2025, Sombke said Congress does have the power to reverse it and U.S. Department of Agriculture could reconsider this change. He urges farmers who do not agree with this ruling to contact their Congressional leaders and comment on the U. S. Department of Agriculture website.

The RMA comment period is open until January 27, 2026. Visit the South Dakota Farmers Union website, www.sdfu.org, to find a link to the comment page of the U.S. Department of Agriculture RMA website. The organization's website is where you can also view the South Dakota Farmers Union Policy Book. Crop insurance is discussed on page 9.