AGR-Lite—Understanding Whole-Farm Insurance for the Specialized, Diversified, and Organic Farm

The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) will offer a one-hour webinar on Thursday, September 13, to explain Adjusted Gross Revenue Lite (AGR-Lite)— a unique, federally subsidized crop-insurance product that holds great promise to serve the needs of smaller, diverse, specialty crop, organic, and direct-market farmers.

Farmers, crop insurance agents, agricultural lenders, and Cooperative Extension agents from states in the Northeast are especially encouraged to attend this webinar, which will be tailored to their needs. The webinar will feature regionally appropriate examples from the Northeast, and there will be ample time for attendees to ask questions about both AGR-Lite and the AGR-Lite Wizard.

While most insurance products are tied to a specific crop or commodity, AGR-Lite is based on whole-farm revenue and allows farmers who grow several specialty crops, or diverse crops and livestock products, to insure their production based on their historic revenue.

The webinar, "AGR-Lite—Understanding Whole-Farm Insurance for the Specialized, Diversified, and Organic Farms," will explain how AGR-Lite works; provide a brief overview of crop-insurance limitations for specialized, diversified, and organic smaller farms, as well as demonstrate NCAT’s new AGR-Lite Wizard assessment tool. This tool assists farmers and agricultural professionals in evaluating the usefulness of whole-farm revenue insurance.

The hour-long webinar is funded by the USDA Risk Management Agency.