The Georgia Pecan Growers Association recently held a meeting with USDA-Risk Management Agency to discuss the details of Hurricane Helene’s damage and what that means for growers regarding Tropical Storm and Hurricane Policies. Some great information came out of that meeting and we all learned a lot. This morning I saw an excellent blog post from Director of the UGA Weather Network and Agricultural Climatologist, Pam Knox, who does a much better job than I could of summarizing important information for growers to be aware of regarding these insurance policies and how they work.
The one thing I would add is that RMA explained to GPGA that the reason they use specific weather stations on which to base their decisions is that because they have to work with insurance providers to implement these insurance policies, they have to use weather stations with long-term data history to provide actuarials in which the insurance companies can have confidence. RMA is not opposed to using data from additional weather stations. In fact, the more the better, but they must meet the criteria for long-term data sets that are acceptable for the actuarials insurance companies use. RMA could make no guarantees but stated that as they get their operations in Asheville, NC back up and running there is a possibility more counties could be added as the additional data arrives from their network.
I recommend reading Dr. Knox’s excellent summary provided in the link below (click on title of the post):
