Farm Bill: Native Sod Guidelines

The Risk Management Agency’s (RMA) native sod guidelines are designed to inform producers about new rules that impact crop insurance benefits when native sod is tilled for annual crops in the upper Midwest. These guidelines apply to all counties in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. As a producer, your benefits are reduced if you till native sod acreage to grow an annual crop during the first 4 crop years you are covered by Federal crop insurance for that acreage. This reduction in benefits applies only to native sod acreage and does not extend to other acreage in your operation.

Native sod acreage is acreage that has never been tilled or that you cannot prove to have been
previously tilled for crop production. These guidelines apply to acreage that is greater than five acres
per crop policy and for annual crops only. To prove that acreage was previously tilled, you must provide documentation to your approved insurance provider.

Acceptable documentation may include, but is not limited to:


• A Farm Service Agency (FSA)-578 document showing the crop that was previously planted on the requested acreage.

• A prior crop year’s FSA-578 document showing that the requested acreage is classified as 
cropland.

• A prior crop year’s Common Land Unit (CLU) Schema (RMA provides this to approved Insurance providers), presented in a map format that contains the farm number, tract number, field number, CLU classification (the cropland classification code is ‘2’), and calculated acres by field.

• Receipts and/or invoices from custom planters or harvesters identifying the fields that were 
planted or harvested.

• A Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Form CPA-026e identifying the acreage with a “No” in the Sodbust column and a “Yes” in the HEL column.

• An NRCS Form CPA-026e identifying the acreage with a “Yes” in the Sodbust column and a 
determination date on or before February 7, 2014; 

   or

• Precision agriculture planting records and/or raw data for previous crop years, provided such records meet the precision farming acreage reporting requirements. Additional guidelines exist depending on which insurance policy you have for your annual crop.



Please see your crop insurance agent for further details as the type of policy you carry will impact the reduction of your subsidized coverage.

This information was taken from the RMA Fact Sheet regarding Native Sod guidelines.