The USDA Risk Management Agency announced a new crop insurance pilot program, Nurser Value Select, for crop year 2021. NVS is another crop insurance option for nursery crop producers, including those who grow hemp, in addition to the Nursery crop insurance program.
NVS is available in select counties in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington to persons operating nurseries that meet certain criteria. The deadline to purchase NVS insurance or the Sales Closing Date, is May 1, 2020, for Alabama, Florida, New Jersey and Texas and September 1, 2020, for Colorado, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.
NVS was developed with input from nursery producers and the program is based on the existing Nursery crop insurance program, with a few changes:
• Simplification of the application and annual policy renewal process;
• Allowing nursery producers to select the dollar amount of coverage that best fits their risk management needs, and for buy-up policies; coverage tailored by an individual practice (container or field-grown) or by choosing from any of 10 potential plant categories;
• A simplified loss adjustment process that uses a more accurate approach to determining plant values by placing greater reliance on the nursery producer’s actual sales receipts, along with increased producer participation in determining damaged plants’ ability to be marketed or rehabilitated;
• Elimination of a plant list based on third-party software and greater reliance on the producer’s inventory records, along with plant category naming conventions more familiar to the nursery industry;
• Tailored program dates that are better suited to the agronomic and industry nursery management practices in different regions across the country; and
• A new Occurrence Loss Option (OLO), moving the deductible from a unit level to a plant level for an additional premium (only available for buy-up policies).
