RMA Cautions Against Having Agents Fill Out Forms

RMA recently published Final Agency Determination FAD-130, which addresses a situation where the wrong prevented planting acreage got reported.

Reading between the lines, here is what probably happened. The producer called his agent and told the agent how many prevented planting acres he had. The agent filled out the acreage report for the producer and accidentally wrote "zero" for the prevented planting acreage, or did not write in anything about prevented planted acreage (which would be the same as reporting zero). The producer later caught the agent's error, but did so after the Acreage Reporting Date (ARD). The AIP refused to revised the acreage report.

It looks like the producer argued that this should fall under Section 6(d)(2) of the MPCI Basic Provisions, which allows an acreage report to be corrected where there is "adequate evidence that we [the AIP or agent] or someone from USDA have committed an error regarding the information on your acreage report."

In FAD-130, RMA strongly stated that the above policy provision does not apply to situations where someone other than the producer provides incorrect information on the acreage report. RMA said it is the producer's sole responsibility to ensure correct information is entered on the acreage report form. RMA's position seems to be that if the producer has the agent fill out the form, and the agent writes in incorrect information, then the producer is stuck with that information for the policy. (Whether the producer might have an Errors & Omissions claim against the agent would be a matter of state law and is not addressed in this post.)

Although it seems to be common practice for agents to fill out forms for their clients, crop insurance policyholders might want to think twice about having agents do this. You can read the full text of FAD-130 by clicking here.

With any questions about acreage reporting or crop insurance, contact The O'Connor Law Firm, LLC by clicking here.