Data and Methods Detail: Comparison of acres planted to acres insured

Data: CropScape

CropScape accuracy varies across region, crop and year. To account for that, we looked at CropScape in five-year windows, the current year and the previous four, so our hotspots-cold spots analysis begins in 2012. For data comparability between CropScape and RMA Cause of Loss, some sub-categories in CropScape are reclassified into main crop names, i.e., hybrid corn seed and corn are combined as corn, and grain sorghum, hybrid sorghum seed and silage sorghum are combined as sorghum. This reduces the number of crops in CropScape from 118 to 69: wheat, oats, pecans, cotton, corn, peanuts, soybeans, pasture & rangeland & forage, peas, millet, sorghum, sunflower, peaches, potatoes, rye, alfalfa, pepper, canola, pumpkin, barley, tomatoes, blueberries, winter squash, cucumber, apple, sesame, popcorn, oranges, citrus, beans, onion, pistachios, olive, almonds, sugar beet, grapes, cabbage, safflowers, grapefruit, lemon, tangelo, mustard, rice, walnuts, plums, cherries, apricot, pears, mandarin, nectarines, tangerine, strawberries, sugarcane, camelina, avocado, mint, figs, caneberries, flax, tobacco, tangor, nuts, macadamia, banana, coffee, papaya, grass, cranberries, ruby (red & star).

Data: RMA Summary of Business

We compared CropScape data with RMA Summary of Business data aggregated to year, crop and county.

Planted vs insured analyses

We calculated the difference between insured acres and cultivated acres (maximum value) for each year, crop and county. We expressed this as a simple difference (Equation 3),

Equation 3:

as a percentage (Equation 4),

Equation 4:

and as a normalized insured index (Equation 5).

Equation 5: