Welcome to the AgRisk Viewer hosted by the USDA Southwest Climate Hub and ARS Jornada Experimental Range!
The purpose of this Viewer is to allow users to explore, visualize, and analyze publicly-available crop insurance data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA).
What is RMA?
The USDA Risk Management Agency “serves America’s agricultural producers through effective, market-based risk management tools to strengthen the economic stability of agricultural producers and rural communities.” The agency also manages the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), which acts as a safety net for farmers and ranchers against adverse risk related to weather, finances, and production, to name a few.
Read more here: https://www.rma.usda.gov/pubs/rme/aboutrma.pdf
What data are presented here?
The primary sources of these data are obtained from publicly-available historical files from the RMA website: (1) cause of loss historical data files, and (2) summary of business reports.
Why was this web-based interface created?
As part of the USDA Climate Hubs’ mission to deliver science-based, region-specific knowledge to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners, we have embarked on a collaborative project between RMA and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). We have a multi-pronged approach to achieving our ultimate goal: assessing commodity-specific and county-level climate risk using crop insurance data with weather and climate trends. Our specific objectives include:
- Developing a platform for easily accessible RMA data (AgRisk Viewer)
- Analyzing crop insurance trends over time and over space (e.g., county-level, state-level), as well as by cause of loss and commodity.
- Understanding the role of long-term climate trends in crop insurance data to support sustainable agricultural production and community resilience.
Recommended Citation
Reyes, J. and E. Elias. 2019. Spatio-temporal variation of crop loss in the United States from 2001 to 2016. Environmental Research Letters, 14(7). doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1ac9