Despite suffering record crop losses to hail in 2013, Montana farmers have been slow to enroll this year in the state's hail insurance program.

Farmers enrolled number slightly less than 1,500 currently, a 29 percent drop from 2013 when the state issued 2,082 hail insurance policies.

The signup deadline is Aug. 15. Hail season is typically July through August, though in recent years reports of crop-damaging hail storms have spanned several months. Last year, Montana's hail insurance program paid out a record $14 million to farmers who filed claims for storms as early as May and as late as September.

Girding the state insurance program from another year of big payouts, the state Hail Board bought reinsurance to cover all future claims.

The decline in farmers enrolling in the program was unexpected, said Kim Falcon, given last year's crop losses and an early interest in the enrollment this year. Farmers began asking about enrollment in March.

However, federally subsidized multiple peril crop insurance might explain the decline. The 2014 farm bill offers farmers the choice between insurance for multiple peril crop loss or market price decline. The maximum coverage for crop loss for federally subsidized insurance is high enough, some farmers could be thinking twice about enrolling in the state program.

"We have called the producers who have had policies before and just asked them what the difference was and a lot of them are saying it's the federal crop insurance," Falcon said.

Source - http://insurancenewsnet.com/