New EWG map highlights Mississippi River region crop insurance payout ‘hot spots’

A new interactive EWG map highlights county “hot spots” that received disproportionately large and frequent crop insurance payments in the Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area, or MRCCA. The area encompasses more than 387 million acres across 13 states and 2,300 miles of the Mississippi River.

The new map builds on EWG’s recently updated Crop Insurance Database and associated report finding that nationally, farmers received more than $143.5 billion in federal crop insurance payouts from 1995 through 2020. Just under two-thirds of those payments were for crop damage due to excess moisture and drought exacerbated by the climate emergency.

The MRCCA is one of eight U.S. regions covered by the Department of Agriculture’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program. It’s a critical region of the country for agriculture, industry, wildlife and ecological resources. In establishing the MRCCA, the USDA hoped to cut nutrient and sediment runoff from 138 million acres of cropland, primarily corn and soybeans, into local and regional bodies of water. Water quality degradation, inadequate habitat, and insufficient water and drought are major issues in the region.

Farming is big business in the MRCCA: It contains much of the Corn Belt and other agriculturally important areas. Farmers receive indemnity payments from the taxpayer-subsidized federal Crop Insurance Program when their crop yields or revenues go down. Between 2001 and 2020, crop insurance indemnities for the 1,017 counties in the region that received any indemnities were over $51.5 billion dollars, according to USDA data.

But as the map shows, depending on the county, there was a huge range in the size and frequency of insurance payments. Some counties in the MRCCA got none, and others got hundreds of millions of dollars in the same period. Stone County, Mo., had the lowest amount of above-zero crop insurance payments, at only $271, and Brown County, S.D., got the most, at more than $608 million.

Interactive map

Crop insurance "hot spots" in the Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area

The map highlights total crop insurance payouts, called indemnities, as well as payouts from the top five weather-related causes of loss in the Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area. 

Click here

Insurance hot spots in the region

The top 10 crop insurance counties in the MRCCA together received over $3 billion between 2001 and 2020. Six of the counties are in South Dakota, three are in Illinois, and one is in Minnesota. All 10 received crop insurance indemnities every year between 2001 and 2020, and they all collected payments above the MRCCA-wide county average in more than half those years (Table 1).

Table 1. The top 10 crop insurance counties in the MRCCA often got above-average payments.

Source: EWG, from the USDA Risk Management Agency, Cause of Loss Historical Data Files

The main reason for a reduction in crop yield or revenue that triggers a crop insurance payment to a farmer is called the “cause of loss,” a factor that damages crop yield, such as drought, excessive rain or hail, or decreases on the price side of farmer revenues, such as a decline in crop price.

The climate crisis has already increased the cost of crop insurance, because many crop insurance causes of loss result from adverse weather-related conditions. The climate emergency will cause even more insurance payments and damage to crops in the future.

EWG’s new map shows county-level insurance payments for the top five weather-related causes of loss that generated the most payments between 2001 and 2020: excess moisture, precipitation and rain; drought; flood; heat; and hail.

A decline in crop price is third on the list of the top five. The number four cause was specific group risk insurance plans, noted as “GRP/GRIP/ARPI crops only.” But the map highlights the top five weather-related causes of loss instead of showing the top five causes of loss across all causes.

The map also shows the frequency of payments for each county: how many years between 2001 and 2020 farmers in each county received a payment above zero, as well as how many years the county received payments above the MRCCA county-level average. The map also provides this frequency information for the top five weather-related causes of loss, which made up $40.6 billion in payments in the MRCCA between 2001 and 2020. That’s almost four-fifths of total indemnities for all causes of loss in the region (Table 2).

Table 2. The top five weather-related causes of loss paid out over $40.6 billion in insurance payments in the MRCCA.

Source: EWG, from USDA Risk Management Agency, Cause of Loss Historical Data Files

Excess moisture and drought made up most payments across the top five weather-related causes of loss, and all causes of loss in the region. Together they made up 71 percent of all indemnities in the MRCCA. Paradoxically, many counties got both drought and excess moisture payments in the same year. Forty counties in the region received both drought and excess moisture payments in the same year every year between 2001 and 2020.

Hot spot counties for the top five weather-related causes of loss

Hot spot counties for each of the top five weather-related causes of loss received millions of dollars in insurance payments and many years of payments. Table 3 shows the top 10 counties where the most payments were received for each of the top five weather-related causes of loss between 2001 and 2020.

Table 3. The top 10 counties with the most indemnities for the five weather-related causes of loss each received millions of dollars in payments.

Source: EWG, from USDA Risk Management Agency, Cause of Loss Historical Data Files

These counties also often got payments for the top five weather-related causes of loss that were larger than the MRCCA county-level average payments. As with excess moisture, the top 10 counties each received excess moisture payments higher than the MRCCA average in 60 percent or more of the 20 years. Refer to these counties on the interactive map to see the number of years that each county received indemnities for the top five weather-related causes of loss.

What needs to be done

Billions of dollars are spent every year on the federal Crop Insurance Program and other farm subsidy programs. EWG’s new map shows that certain counties are hot spots for large and frequent insurance payments. With a changing climate, payments are likely to get even bigger in the hot spots that have already gotten big payouts for weather-related causes of loss.

But these programs do not encourage farmers to adapt to the extreme conditions created by the climate emergency. The billions of dollars spent on them must be used more effectively to encourage farmers to adapt to the climate crisis and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Reforming these programs and increasing funding for conservation program practices that have the biggest climate impact can help farmers mitigate the climate crisis and better prepare them for the extreme weather that lies ahead.