By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

CELINA, Ohio — Producers can now go to WeatherBill for Total Weather Insurance (TWI). A supplement to federal insurance, TWI provides full-season and multi-peril protection from bad weather. Grain producer Steve Wolters, who had a drought protection policy with WeatherBill last year, called it a “win-win situation.”

“If you do get ample rainfall you’re going to gain crop yield and if you don’t get rainfall you collect insurance; that was my experience last summer,” Wolters said.

With traditional crop insurance most growers will cover at about 75 percent of their actual production history (APH), which is a 10- to 20-year production history for that particular field or group of fields, said Greg Smirin, chief revenue officer for WeatherBill. TWI enables growers to lock in profits by insuring yield shortfalls that are not covered by federal crop insurance.

“If a farmer has a 10-year bushel per acre average of 160 and they’re at 75 percent coverage, that’s somewhere around 115 or 116 bushels that the federal government program will cover,” Smirin said. “However, given the advance in seeds and chemicals and farming practices of the last 10 to 15 years, they’re going to be aiming, depending on the part of the country, for 190 to 220 bushels per acre.”

For many growers. the maximum payout from federal coverage does not cover the significant input costs that today’s high-yield farming requires, Smirin said. In many parts of the Midwest farmers are seeing that unless they have a really good year they could end up losing money per acre even with federal crop insurance.

TWI pays automatically when bad weather hits crops; there is no claims process or paperwork to file.

“We take growers through a free online weather risk report that shows in five minutes what they’re true level of exposure is, what they’re insurance gap is,” Smirin said.

There are generally four to six peril periods during each total policy. To provide TWI for a specific location WeatherBill looks at the best dates for protection against those perils such as early season excess rain protection or mid-season drought protection or excess heat during corn pollination protection. The weighing of those perils is based on what the payments for losses in that crop and county have been over the last 30 years.

The payments are then based on what occurs with the weather according to the U.S. National Weather Service, Smirin said. WeatherBill’s system tracks it. Farmers can log-in and see what’s happening. Within 10 days of one of those periods being past, if the thresholds have been met for payment, a check is automatically sent. There is no need for a claims process.

“I had a drought protection policy with WeatherBill and that was basically for the whole month of August. I did roughly owe $400 at that point in time and didn’t get enough rain so it worked out well,” Wolters said.

For the upcoming season he has a combination of prevented planting coverage and then the drought portion. Each peril has about a 60-day window. New this season the premium is not payable until the fall, Wolters said.

“Any benefits you would receive they’ll subtract it from the premium owed so possibly if you do collect you may not have any out-of-pocket cost at all,” Wolters said.

WeatherBill has announced that March 15 is the deadline to lock in TWI for the 2011 crop season. For information visit www.weatherbill.com or phone toll-free 888-924-7475.