A revamped crop insurance section of the University of Illinois farmdoc website was released this past week, along with two new web-based decision tools. The iFarm Premium Calculator provides farmer-paid premiums for insurance products on a per-acre basis. The iFarm Insurance Evaluator provides performance evaluations of alternative crop insurance products for a case farm within a county. “As crop insurance decisions loom for farmers, we expect these two new online tools will help ease the process,” Gary Schnitkey, University of Illinois ag economist and a member of the farmdoc team, said in a university news release. The online tools were developed with the assistance of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. “Agricultural production is a risky business,” says Scott Wilkins, director of economic and societal impact at NCSA, who lives on his family’s farm. “My family faces a variety of price, yield and resource risks, which make our farm income unstable from year to year. I believe the crop insurance tool is a continuous improvement in the ongoing effort to make sure the data that sets the rates is relevant and stable for the insurance public. As a result, the farmer has better data to manage risks of their operation.” iFarm Premium Calculator This calculator allows users to develop highly customized estimates of their crop insurance premiums and compare revenue and yield guarantees across all available crop insurance products and elections for their actual farm case. It shows a comparison between farm-level and area-level insurance products in terms of cost and guarantee values. It also uses current price and volatility conditions and will track current market conditions through the final release by RMA of 2016 Projected Prices and Volatilities. This tool gives users a quick means to compare insurance premiums for all possible products and election levels in a format that is simple to interpret. iFarm Payment Evaluator This tool develops a case farm for most counties in the major corn and soybean regions and provides estimates of premiums for all available crop insurance products for basic and enterprise units by coverage level, along with the expected frequency of payments, average payment per acre, net cost per acre and risk reductions associated with alternative crop insurance products and election levels in an easily understood format. The tool uses current price and volatility estimates while providing helpful information to producers. Both calculators can be found online at www.farmdoc.illinois.edu/cropins. Source - iowafarmertoday.com