Crop insurance deadline nears - Fraud detection goes high tech

NATIONAL CROP INSURANCE SERVICES

8900 Indian Creek Parkway, Suite 600

Overland Park , KS 66210

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 6, 2006
For more information contact Jan Eliassen at 410-778-0120 or Laurie Langstraat at 913-685-2767.

Crop insurance deadline nears
Fraud detection goes high tech

OVERLAND PARK, KAN…Across the country October 2 (because September 30 falls on a Saturday) is the deadline for signing up for federally subsidized crop insurance on many fall planted crops. Those crops will be monitored using USDA’s ever growing aerial photography map of America’s farms and through computerized data mining efforts.

Through the summer, small planes have been creating the photographic inventory that will allow USDA to monitor the activity in every farm field in the country. Some of that monitoring will no doubt include checking for possible fraud in the crop insurance program.

According to Dr. Bert Little, of Tarleton State University, less than two tenths of one percent of the thousands of farmers, agents, and adjusters involved in the crop insurance program participate in fraudulent activity. Little leads the computerized “data mining” project funded by the Risk Management Agency that identifies anomalies in the pattern of crop insurance claims. Now USDA will be able to add the aerial mapping system to its fraud detection tool kit.

Among the most common fall planted crops with the October 2 deadline are alfalfa seed, canola, cultivated wild rice, mint, potatoes, rangeland (GRP), rye, sugarcane winter wheat, barley, oats, and forage production. For producers of those crops, the fraud fighting efforts of the crop insurance industry and the Risk Management Agency help protect the integrity of the crop insurance program many of them depend on.

According to the Risk Management Agency, in 2006, farmers paid over $1.8 billion in premiums. That investment, plus the federal subsidy, resulted in nearly 239 million insured acres of crops with $48.9 billion of insurance protection in force.

Maintaining the integrity of the crop insurance program is vital to the crop insurance companies, who share in the losses, the taxpayers, and producers, whose premiums may be adversely affected by fraud.

Anyone who wants to sign up for crop insurance on their fall planted crops, or to make any changes to existing policies should contact a crop insurance agent well before the October 2 deadline.

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