Is your farm insured properly? This is something we ask first and foremost when meeting with potential new clients. We do this to help our clients understand how their insurance works.

One common issue we see in a family’s farm insurance is each individual insuring the farm and not insuring the entire operation under the same policy.

If a family is farming together, regardless of how many entities, sons, uncles, cousins, etc are involved, it is normally best to have the entire operation insured on the same policy. This helps avoid people paying double for the same coverage.

For example, if father and son are farming together under Hall Family Farm LLC, all 3 (father, son and LLC) need to be listed as a named insured on the policy. This will allow the coverages to encompass all three in a claims situation. This also allows the operation to only have to purchase 1 liability policy, instead of potentially 3 different ones (again for the father, son and LLC). In many cases we see where dad owns 50% of the machinery or trucks and son owns the other 50%. If the father and son have separate policies, then they are having to insure the entire value of a piece of equipment they only have 50% investment in. Both are insuring the same piece of equipment, meaning more out of pocket expenses for each. Another thing to note is that we list out all locations farmed on a policy for liability coverage. If you have partially owned equipment on only one of their policies and don’t have the land covered on both policies, a claim could be denied based on the land the equipment was on at the time of the claim.

If you have multiple policies, here are some of the things you are potentially paying twice for:

• Farm Liability

• Land Liability

• Livestock Liability

• Equipment Coverage

• Grain Coverage

• Seed Coverage

• Chemical coverage

• Pollution Liability

• Hired and Non-Owned Auto Liability

• Umbrella

If you aren’t paying twice for the above items while on two separate policies, than one of the two are not insured properly.

Regardless of how many entities are involved in an operation, having one policy over the entire operation makes it more cost effective, easier to review at one time and less complicated.

Many come back saying no immediately to conjoining policies because they are worried about billing. We will take care of the billing for each entity. For example, we have a current customer that requires 4 invoices from our office. One individual pays their portion annually, one semi-annually and two pay monthly. We can do whatever is necessary to make sure each entity is still paying for their portion and in the payment method of their preference.

Farming together is not always easy, but your insurance should be! That is why we have worked hard to assist our fellow agriculturalist in making their insurance less complicated. We know how hard farmers are working to feed the population and that is why we are working on your behalf to help protect and insure your operation.