LUBBOCK, Texas (RFD-TV) — Margin Protection (MP) is a county-level crop insurance option that protects expected operating margin using county yields, futures prices, and region-specific input costs. Coverage ranges from 70 percent to 95 percent, and MP can be paired with individual policies such as Yield Protection or Revenue Protection — but not with the Supplemental Coverage Option or Enhanced Coverage Option.
A Protection Factor from 80 percent to 120 percent lets producers scale coverage — higher than 100% for farms that typically beat county yields, or lower if they tend to trail.
For some southern crops, MP uses an earlier sales-closing and price-discovery window — August 15 to September 14, 2025 — offering the chance to lock in values ahead of the normal spring window (January 15 to February 14, 2026). For corn, USDA’s Risk Management Agency lists a projected MP price of $4.55/bu, implying about $4.32/bu of price protection if county yields and costs hold. MP also tracks input futures — Urea, DAP, diesel, and interest rates — with their own projected and harvest discovery periods.
Hunter Biram, Assistant Professor and Associate Director at the Southern Risk Management Center, says decision support is available through the University of Arkansas’s web-based MP tool, including breakeven estimates.
One example shows a $4.13/bu breakeven at 95% coverage if the 30-day average of December 2026 corn futures during harvest (August 15 to September 14, 2026) falls below that mark. A new option, the Margin Coverage Option (MCO), provides area-based margin coverage over an 86% to 90% or 95% band, uses the same county yields as SCO/ECO, and carries an 80% premium subsidy. 2026 SCDs include September 30, 2025, for cotton and sorghum, and February 28, 2026, for Arkansas rice.
Farm-Level Takeaway: MP and the new MCO add county-level margin tools — with earlier price discovery, input cost triggers, and high subsidy rates — to complement on-farm risk plans for 2026.
Tony St. James, RFD-TV Markets Expert
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