The Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) was first offered to cotton producers in 2015. Along with the Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO), STAX is one of the area-wide plans of insurance that are designed to help a grower cover a portion of their underlying crop insurance deductible. Unlike the underlying Multi-Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) policies, both STAX and SCO trigger indemnities based solely on area-wide losses (i.e., only if the entire county triggers a loss). Both STAX and SCO are taking on newfound importance in the 2023 Farm Bill debate, as improvements to both could serve to reduce the need for ad hoc disaster assistance. Currently STAX is still only available to cotton producers whereas SCO is widely available across the country.
In our travels around the country over the last several months, we’ve often been asked about the future of policies like STAX and SCO, and we’ve repeatedly been told that they are simply too expensive. That wasn’t too surprising to us in the case of SCO, because the premium support is just 65%. On the other hand, we were considerably more surprised in the case of STAX because the premium support is 80% – growers must pay just 20% of the premium. Consequently, in this article, we take a closer look at STAX premiums across the country for the 2023 crop year. [READ MORE]