Lamar sits right in a part of the state where farming can be a great way to make a living, but the weather certainly doesn’t always cooperate. Setting up crop insurance around Prowers County isn’t always just a simple matter of signing a piece of paper and forgetting about it. There are some very specific local hurdles that tend to pop up year after year for operations in the area.
If you are looking at covering your fields this coming season, it helps to know what you might run into. Here is a fast checklist of the common issues folks see when trying to insure crops in Lamar Colorado:
- Low Production History: Past drought years dragging down your overall coverage limits.
- Irrigation Changes: Fluctuating water allocations affecting how your policy is rated.
- Strict Federal Deadlines: Missing hard cutoffs for planting or acreage reporting.
- Hail Gaps: Standard policies not providing enough protection against severe summer hail.
- Prevented Planting Rules: Difficulty proving widespread dry conditions to trigger a claim before planting.
Here is a closer look at how these specific issues actually play out in the field.
Dealing With Past Yields
Crop insurance heavily relies on your Actual Production History, which most people just call their APH. This is basically your track record of what you have managed to grow over the last several years. The main problem in southeastern Colorado is that a few severe drought years can really drag down your average yield numbers.
When your APH is low because of bad weather that was entirely out of your control, the maximum amount of coverage you can actually buy drops. It is a frustrating issue. Some people get surprised when they see their coverage limits aren’t nearly as high as they expected or needed, simply cause of a bad dry spell from three or four years ago.
The Irrigation Factor
Water is pretty much always a main topic of conversation around here. If you are farming irrigated ground, your insurance coverage relies on having a reliable water source.
Sometimes issues happen where well permits change or surface water allocations from the river get unusually tight. If your expected water supply drops before the final insurance deadline, it can complicate how your policy is structured. You have to be very clear about your water situation upfront. If you insure a crop as irrigated but then don’t actually have the water to support it, it can cause major problems if a claim needs to be filed later in the season.
Strict Planting Timelines
Farming doesn’t always run on a perfect schedule, but the federal crop insurance program absolutely does.
There are hard deadlines for everything involved. You have a final planting date for specific crops, and if you are forced to plant after that date, your coverage guarantee starts dropping every single day. Then there is the acreage reporting deadline. If a delay happens cause you are waiting on parts for the tractor or just waiting on the weather to turn, missing these dates can cause massive headaches. It is very common for folks to get caught off guard by these strict cutoffs when the spring gets chaotic.
Gaps In Hail Protection
Multi peril crop insurance covers a wide variety of things, and that does include hail. But anyone who has spent a summer in Lamar knows exactly how destructive the localized hail storms can be out on the eastern plains.
A major issue is relying only on a standard multi peril policy and assuming it will fully cover a total hail wipeout. These standard policies often leave a financial gap. A lot of operations find out too late that they probly should have picked up a separate standalone crop hail policy to fill in those gaps. Those standalone policies can also sometimes pay out faster when a sudden storm completely flattens a specific field.
Trying To Claim Prevented Planting
Sometimes the main issue isn’t losing the crop during the summer, it’s never getting it in the ground at all. Prevented planting coverage is built into most standard policies, but triggering it isn’t always a smooth process.
If conditions are just too dry to plant—which happens plenty around here—the rules around claiming prevented planting get very detailed. You usually have to prove that other producers in the surrounding area were also prevented from planting because of the exact same weather conditions. If it is just an isolated issue on your specific ground, getting that claim approved can become a real battle.