Q: Are there any enhancements to Moisture Deficiency Insurance for 2023?  

Moisture Deficiency Insurance is shifting to monthly payments to ensure money gets into producers’ hands as quickly as possible. This will allow producers to be more agile as they access water, buy feed or take other steps to deal with dry conditions.

With this change, the frequency of payments has increased, and the early/late options have been removed. Monthly payments should allow for the likelihood of increased indemnities. The indemnity trigger point will be reduced from 70 per cent to 65 per cent

The monthly weighting changes remain the same and are shown below:

Option Weighting
Option A 40/40/20/0
Option B 40/30/30/0
Option C 30/30/20/20
Option D 25/25/25/25

Q: Last year, AFSC changed the minimum amount of moisture used in calculating the daily moisture amounts and added a new heat component to Moisture Deficiency Insurance. Are these still in place for the 2023 crop year?

The changes that were made in 2021 remain in place. The minimum amount of moisture used in calculating the daily moisture amounts remains at 1.00 mm up from 0.1 mm. With the heat component, every day that the temperature at the selected weather station(s) reaches 30 C or higher, 1.0 mm will be subtracted from the precipitation total for the month; and if the temperature reaches or exceeds 35 C, 2 mm will be deducted.