Continued Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage (PRF) Insurance Expansion in 2026

By Francis Tsiboe and Walker Davis

In the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP), forage crops are primarily insured using index insurance products that rely on rainfall index to protect against relative drought. Differing from most other crops typically insured under FCIP, forage crops can be either perennial or annual and can be used for hay production or as pasture and rangeland for grazing. For perennial forage used for grazing or haying, the Risk Management Agency offers the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage (PRF) insurance program. PRF provides coverage against rainfall risk using the rainfall index, with indemnities issued when indexed estimated precipitation falls below the selected coverage level. The program operates on a grid basis rather than a farm basis, meaning precipitation is estimated across a geographic grid and applied to all acres enrolled within that grid. Unlike harvested crops, forage that is continuously or partially grazed cannot be measured in terms of yield because livestock consume forage over time rather than being harvested at a single point. The rainfall index therefore provides a practical proxy for forage productivity and drought risk.

This brief follows earlier work from the Agricultural Risk Policy Center that examined the rapid expansion of PRF enrollment and raised two key questions: whether enrollment had begun to peak and how much eligible land remained uninsured (Tsiboe et al., 2025). Since that analysis was completed using data through 2025, newly released enrollment figures for 2026 provide an opportunity to evaluate whether those trends have continued or have begun to change.

PRF acreage reports are due by December 1 of the year prior to the insured crop year, the same deadline used for program sign up and sales closing. As of 2026-03-19 over 322.54 million acres were enrolled in PRF for the 2026 commodity year, representing growth of more than 8.59 million acres compared to 2025 (Figure 1). While this increase confirms that enrollment continues to expand, the pace of growth re- mains relatively modest compared to the rapid expansion observed between 2016 and 2022. The pattern reinforces the earlier finding that PRF may be approaching saturation in some of the regions where forage production dominates agricultural land use.

Figure 1: United States Insurance Program Liability and Net Acres Insured for Forage, Range, And Pasture. (2007-2026).

Source: Agricultural Risk Policy Center, NDSU, using data from USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA).

There was also modest growth in acres covered under the Annual Forage program, totaling 6.59 million acres in 2026, which is shown as “Forage Only” in Figure 1. This product insures planted annual forage that does not qualify for PRF and relies on the same rainfall index framework. Although enrollment in this product remains much smaller than PRF, it represents another avenue through which producers manage rainfall risk in forage systems. While PRF far exceeds other forage related insurance products and most FCIP products in terms of acreage enrolled, its liabilities per acre remain relatively small as shown in the first panel of Figure 1. This reflects the lower insured value per acre associated with forage systems com- pared to many annual crops.

Figure 2 shows the change in PRF penetration from 2025 to 2026. Penetration is defined as the share of insured acres in each county that are enrolled in PRF relative to total PRF eligible acres. Nationally, PRF penetration increased from 70.9 in 2025 to 72.84 in 2026, reflecting the overall growth in enrollment.

Only 9 of the 46 reported states experienced a decline in PRF participation during this period. States that experienced more than one percent decline in PRF penetration included Wyoming (-2.55 percent), Kansas (-1.92 percent), and Kentucky (-1.32 percent).

In 2025, Wyoming reached 75.77 percent penetration and was the closest state to joining Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah where all eligible acres were enrolled in PRF. In 2026, the penetration for Wyoming declined to 73.22 percent. As a result, New Mexico is now the closest state to reaching full penetration at 79.82 percent. Aside of Wyoming, every state with at least 34 percent penetration in 2025 experienced continued growth in 2026. These included Florida (+8.53 percent), New Mexico (+4.48 percent), Vermont (+4.26 percent), Colorado (+3.82 percent), Washington (+3.2 percent), Nebraska (+1.97 percent), Texas (+1.2 percent), and California (+1.12 percent). This suggests that once the program becomes established within a region, producers tend to continue using it and participation stabilizes at relatively high levels.

Interestingly, several states widely recognized for cattle production and large areas of pastureland including Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas experienced relatively limited growth in 2026, with increases generally below 2.06 percent. This is notable because these states still had lower than expected participation levels in 2025. Apart from Texas and Nebraska, each had pene- tration below 56 percent in the previous year. This outcome is partly driven by the structure of the data and the way PRF eligible acres are defined. In this analysis, an acre is considered PRF eligible if it was identified at any time between 2008 and 2025 as rangeland in the USDA Forest Service Rangelands V1 dataset or if it was classified in the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Cropland Data Layer as pasture, grass, shrubland, or hay. As a result, acres that are occasionally planted with forage crops or included within rotational grazing systems may still be categorized as PRF eligible even if they are periodically used for other crop production. Another factor to consider is that many of these states fall within regions where the Annual Forage insurance program is also offered. While that product covers a different type of forage production, it provides another form of protection and may influence overall participation patterns across forage insurance programs.

Figure 2: United States Acreage Penetration of the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage Program, Measured Against All PRF-Eligible Acres.

Note: County acreage eligibility for PRF is defined as the total land area within each PRF rainfall-index grid cell that satisfies specific land-cover criteria. Eligible land must contain either rangeland vegetation identified in the USDA Forest Service Range- lands V1 dataset or pasture, grass, shrub, or hay classes from the USDA NASS Cropland Data Layer (CDL; 2008–2025). In addition, every eligible pixel must meet an unpopulated-land requirement (population density equal to zero) based on the 2010 USGS block-level population-density raster, ensuring exclusion of developed and urbanized areas. To maintain consistency with grazing-use expectations, we assign ineligibility to grids in a county only if that county and all of its contiguous counties report zero January-1 inventory of cattle (including calves), goats, and sheep (including lambs) for all years from 2000 through the cur- rent year. Finally, preliminary county-level eligible acreage estimates produced by this procedure are capped at the maximum agricultural land acreage reported for each county in the Census of Agriculture (2002–2022).

Source: Agricultural Risk Policy Center, NDSU, using data from USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA), USDA National Agriculture Statistics Services (NASS), and USGS.

Florida remained an outlier among Southern states as it was in 2025, experiencing a large increase of roughly 8 percentage points in penetration on top of an already high participation level of 65.8 percent in 2025. Florida’s strong participation may partly reflect the large amount of pastureland and cattle production present in the state relative to much of the Southeast. This makes Florida an exception to the broader pattern of low participation across the eastern United States. Along with Ohio, these two states remain the only states with more than 30 percent PRF penetration across the Midwest and Southeast, highlighting the continued contrast in program usage between the western and eastern portions of the country. Continued growth may also reflect increasing familiarity among producers with rainfall index insurance as a tool for managing forage risk. Florida’s experience may also suggest that participation in other eastern states could increase as awareness and familiarity with the program expand.

The latest enrollment data show that PRF continued to expand nationwide in 2026, reinforcing its position as the FCIP product with the largest number of insured acres. However, consistent with earlier ARPC findings, the pace of growth has slowed relative to the rapid expansion observed between 2016 and 2022. The longer-run pattern in enrolled acreage and liabilities suggests that the program may be approaching saturation in many western rangeland states where participation is already high. At the same time, substantial PRF-eligible acreage remains uninsured in other parts of the country, particularly across portions of the Midwest and Southeast where participation continues to lag. Future growth in PRF will therefore likely depend less on additional expansion in already highly enrolled regions and more on increased adoption in areas where large shares of eligible forage acreage remain uninsured.

An additional issue to monitor is recent RMA guidance clarifying compliance requirements in the RI and PRF programs. In its March 11, 2026, Informational Memorandums (COM-26-003), RMA emphasized that producers remain responsible for paying the premium specified in the policy and indicated that third- party premium funding arrangements tied to a share of indemnities may violate federal antirebating rules. The memorandum also clarified that PRF acres must be owned or leased by the acreage reporting date, that BLM and ephemeral grazing acres must be supported by leasing documentation and active-use grazing records, and that insured acreage must be tied to domesticated livestock in an agricultural operation rather than wildlife or recreational uses. These clarifications could modestly slow participation growth in some areas if they reduce the use of nontraditional funding arrangements or limit coverage on acres that do not clearly meet insurability requirements. At the same time, they may strengthen the long- run integrity of the program by reinforcing that participation should reflect genuine forage risk exposure and valid insurable interest.

Ongoing research at the Agricultural Risk Policy Center is also examining how economic incentives shape PRF participation. ARPC is developing work on whether participation responds to the historical profitability of rainfall index contracts at the grid level and whether observed participation patterns reflect traditional risk-management demand or responsiveness to the financial attractiveness of specific contract structures. Together, the recent policy guidance and this ongoing research suggest that future PRF growth may depend not only on the amount of remaining uninsured eligible acreage, but also on how pro-gram rules, contract design, and expected returns influence producer participation decisions.

References

Tsiboe, Francis, Walker Davis, and Dylan Turner (2025). Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage (PRF) Insurance Ex- pansion and Emerging Limits to Growth. ARPC Brief 2025-16. Agricultural Risk Policy Center, North Dakota State University. https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.391345.