As the year comes to a close, we've once again asked the DTN/Progressive Farmer reporting team to pick out the most significant, most fun, or otherwise their favorite, story of 2025. We hope you enjoy our writers' favorites, continuing the series with today's story by DTN Farm Business Editor Katie Dehlinger.

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If you read the flow of press releases from commodity organizations that come out around farm bill discussions, one theme is clear: Crop insurance is sacred. Thou shalt not criticize crop insurance, or else you'll imperil the most reliable, functional piece of the farm safety net.

And yet, crop insurance does not work, or work well, for everyone.

There are many places in the Corn Belt where farms pay their premiums every year and very rarely receive an indemnity -- think high-productivity soils in Illinois or irrigated corn production in Nebraska. Premiums keep going up, when in these areas the lack of indemnity history is evidence of low risk. In some years, you can attribute higher premiums to commodity prices, but in low-price environments like the last few years, it raises an eyebrow. Are you really getting what you think you're paying for? Farmers in these areas continue to buy revenue protection policies. Some do it because it's a requirement of their bank. For others, it's a part of their overall risk management and marketing plan, and a subsidized element at that.

USDA's Risk Management Agency has expanded subsidies for some of its newest "shallow loss" products like the Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO), Margin Protection (MP) and Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO), but the growing level of complexity raises a serious concern: Are these programs offsetting real risk? These programs are based on county-level triggers, rather than a farm's production history.

These policies have been aggressively marketed to farmers. Throughout 2025, I've talked to numerous experts -- many in academia and others in private business -- that question whether these policies protect real risk in a farming operation or just allow farmers a way to bet on broader probabilities. The out-of-pocket price for farmers has dropped as subsidies have increased, but with today's compressed profit margins, every dollar spent has meaningful impact on the bottom line. If farmers are going to buy extra insurance, they need to know how it works and what risk it covers.

For most people, crop insurance is the basis of their operation's risk management plan, particularly with revenue protection policies. What I've learned over the past year is that it's worth getting into the weeds. Your crop insurance salesman can be a great resource, but the onus is on the farmers to ask themselves hard questions about what they're buying and why.

"You're betting on probabilities" with crop insurance, Phelps County, Nebraska, farmer Phil High told me this summer. "You've got to drill down and really understand what your risk is. I think every single farmer is capable of doing that. Do they? No."

High is one of a small, but growing, number of farmers who are employing a different insurance strategy: forming their own microcaptive insurance companies. In this approach to insurance, the parent company (the farm) creates a subsidy insurance company that insures the risks of the parent company and its affiliated businesses (trucking, livestock, etc.)

The approach has been used widely in other industries, and it's a potential way for farms to create highly customized risk management plans, generate tax-deferred savings and accumulate appreciable wealth.

"If you're a mom-and-pop Schedule F farmer, don't waste your time," Paul Neiffer, a tax adviser and author of the Farm CPA Report, told me for the August cover story of Progressive Farmer magazine.

It's a sophisticated tool that reflects the growing complexity of farming operations today. While most are still family-owned and operated business, it's probably more accurate to describe them as agribusinesses, with risks on many fronts that aren't well covered by crop, liability or property insurance policies.

I like writing stories about creative people putting innovative ideas into practice. This story challenged my writing because I had to make a highly complex topic simple to understand. I am by no means an expert in insurance, but I'm grateful for all the ones who helped inform my reporting on this article. With winter setting in across the countryside, "A Smarter Way to Self-Insure" is worth reading. Even if a microcaptive is beyond your business ambitions, I hope it inspires more thoughtful reflection on risk management in the year ahead.

Article that ran on DTN: https://www.dtnpf.com/… .

Blog: https://www.dtnpf.com/… .

Katie Dehlinger can be reached at katie.dehlinger@dtn.com

Follow her on social platform X @KatieD_DTN

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