LRP Insurance Available to Help Cattle Producers Manage Risk

May 7, 2021

Cattle futures have been getting hammered lately on the sharply higher corn prices. And that has a lot of cattlemen and women talking about how they can manage risk and protect their bottom line.

Shawn Fladager is the branch manager for Northwest Farm Credit Services in Great Falls, Mont. and says there’s a risk management tool available called Livestock Risk Protection insurance that can help.

"The Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) has been around for over a decade now," said Fladager. "It's a tool that has been available and offered by the Risk Management Agency, which is the governing body of crop insurance. It's a tool that you can use to help hedge the market for lack of a better term. If cattle futures have a sharp fall at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, this program is designed to help protect producers from that.

He says LRP offers to coverage options for cattle.

"We've two classifications for cattle: fed cattle and feeder cattle," said Fladager. Feeder cattle are the ones that'll be most common. These are cow-calf operations. And we can insure steers and heifers. We can even insure dairy cattle and Brahman cattle. There's also new option to insure unborn calves too. It hasn't been in place until this year."

He says LRP is very flexible and feeder cattle contracts can be on any number of animals from one to 6,000 head. LRP is also available for swine.

For more information about Livestock Risk Protection insurance, contact your local crop insurance agent.  

Source: Montana Ag Network and Western Ag Network