What Are Crop, Pasture, and Livestock Insurance in Texas?

In states like Texas with a large agricultural industry, protecting farms and ranches with the right ranch insurance is essential.

Property and building insurance are two obvious policies that every farmer or rancher typically holds, but there are other types of farm insurance to protect each farmer’s bottom line, too.

Among them are crop, pasture, and livestock coverage policies sold by a farm insurance agency, each one offering specialty protection that helps farmers and ranchers keep their agricultural businesses operational amidst certain losses.

  1. Crop Insurance - Crop insurance protects growers against financial losses sustained from a failed crop due to drought, flood, freezing, disease, and other circumstances beyond their control. Some crop farm insurance policies may also cover losses due to falling crop prices, as well. Cotton and wheat are the top crops in Texas and both have suffered greatly in the past few years due to drought and other extreme weather conditions.
  2. Pasture Insurance - Although pasture is not a traditional crop, it is still an essential crop that gets grown for grazing and haymaking for livestock farmers to feed their animals. The failure of this crop can lead to astronomical losses as ranchers struggle to find supplemental sources of hay for their livestock. Pasture insurance provides the funding necessary to do that when drought or dwindling vegetation prevents enough pasture growth to sustain livestock.
  3. Livestock Insurance - A range of livestock ranch insurance policies helps ranchers recover from a variety of losses as well. Standard livestock mortality insurance protects herds from deaths due to natural causes like blizzards, fire, and extreme weather events; full mortality covers herd and show livestock, including cattle and horses, from deaths due to sickness, disease, drowning, accidents, and other causes. Risk protection and gross margin insurance provide additional coverage when market prices drop and livestock selling prices go below the costs of raising them.

Though Texas is home to a large number of profitable farms and ranches, there are years when farmers and ranchers suffer great losses due to weather disasters, drought, lack of pasture, falling market prices, and many other problems.

Crop, pasture, and livestock insurance are all specialty insurance products sold by a farm insurance agency that can help agriculture businesses in the state recover from these financial losses so they can stay on their feet.

Ranchers and farmers should contact a farm or ranch insurance agency to learn about the best policies that can help them stay in business, even when facing financial losses due to bad weather agricultural disasters.