Revenue Protection (RP) Crop Insurance, Explained
RP is the policy most row-crop acres carry: it guarantees revenue, not just yield, and the guarantee can rise with the market. Here's how the projected and harvest prices work — and why RP is a marketing tool, not just insurance.
What Revenue Protection is
Revenue Protection (RP) is the most widely used federal crop insurance plan on corn and soybean acres. Instead of insuring bushels alone (that's Yield Protection), RP insures revenue — yield × price — so it responds whether the problem is a short crop, a broken price, or both at once.
The two prices that define it
RP uses futures-market averages set by RMA:
- Projected price — the average of new-crop futures during a set discovery window before planting (for Midwest corn, December futures averaged over February).
- Harvest price — the same futures contract averaged during harvest (October for corn).
Your baseline guarantee is:
APH yield × coverage level × projected price
and RP's defining feature: if the harvest price is higher, the guarantee recalculates at the higher price (up to policy limits). A claim pays the gap between the guarantee and your actual revenue (actual yield × harvest price).
Why the upward reset matters so much
That harvest-price feature is what makes RP a marketing enabler, not just disaster coverage. The nightmare that stops farmers from forward-selling is: sell bushels ahead, lose the crop, then have to buy out of contracts in a rallying market. Under RP, that scenario is exactly when the guarantee resets upward — the indemnity is calculated at the price the market rallied to, which is the money you'd need to settle those contracts.
In practice: bushels inside your RP guarantee can be forward contracted with a level of confidence that surprises people who think of insurance and marketing as separate files.
Choosing coverage
Coverage levels commonly run 50–85% in 5-point steps; premiums rise steeply at the top because shallow losses are frequent. Unit structure (optional/basic/enterprise) changes both premium and how losses aggregate across fields. Those choices are farm-specific — model them with your agent using your own APH and cost structure.
Price-discovery windows, coverage options, and endorsements are set by USDA RMA and vary by state and year. Confirm current details with your agent.
Keep reading
- Glossary · 1 min read
APH (Actual Production History), Explained
Your APH is the multi-year yield average that crop insurance uses to set your guarantee. It's one of the most valuable numbers on your farm — and one of the easiest to accidentally damage with sloppy records.
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Prevented Planting (Prevent Plant), Explained
Prevent plant is the crop-insurance provision that pays when weather keeps you from planting at all. Here's how final planting dates, the late-planting period, and the PP payment actually work.
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Forward Cash Contracts, Explained
A forward contract locks a cash price today for grain you'll deliver later — futures and basis fixed in one handshake. Here's what you're actually locking, and the delivery risk to respect.
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