MORGAN, Minn. (DTN) -- Farmers will get a two-month reprieve on their crop insurance premiums this year and USDA will also reinstate prevented planting buy-up coverage as well, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Tuesday.

Rollins spent Tuesday morning at the Farmfest show in south-central Minnesota, making announcements on crop insurance and detailing USDA's plans to modernize and improve data collection for crop reports.

The Risk Management Agency (RMA) will provide farmers with 60 additional days to pay crop insurance premiums. The scheduled premium billing dates between July 1 and Sept. 30 will be extended 60 days by crop insurance providers.

"For some of you, that may not be a big deal, but I know for others of you, that's a really, really big deal," she said.

During that extended period, approved insurance providers "may waive interest charges," Rollins said. Interest will begin accruing for unpaid premium and administrative fees only after the end of the additional 60-day period, she said.

PREVENTED PLANTING COVERAGE

After RMA removed the 5% buy-up for prevented planting coverage for 2026 spring crops, Rollins also announced USDA will reinstate the 5% buy-up, starting with this year's fall-planted crop. A bipartisan group of senators had written Rollins back in January calling on the department to reinstate the coverage.

"We're putting that back in," Rollins said, adding, "Hopefully this added coverage allows our producers, all of you, bigger and better opportunity to manage risk in situations where extreme weather or other conditions prevent normal planting."

USDA had stated last December, when issuing the rule, that it was ending the prevented planting buy-up because it primarily benefited farmers in the Dakotas, where the majority of prevented planting crop insurance payments are made.

CROP SURVEYS

Rollins also held an event with leaders of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association about USDA reports and the department's "One Farmer, One File" initiative. Farmfest was the beginning of several farmer roundtables on data services and modernization that Rollins said she expects to lead throughout August. Rollins said USDA will host events at state fairs and other events in Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, wrapping up with the Farm Progress Show in Iowa.

Rollins said USDA once was the "gold standard" for crop reports and data collection, but that farmer trust has declined over time. She noted survey responses for Crop Production reports were as high as 85% in 1992, but had fallen to 55% in 2016, and have now dropped to somewhere between 38% and 45%.

"We have lost the faith of the farmer in these surveys, and we've got to get it back," Rollins said.

The secretary said USDA will work on modernization plans that will make it easier for farmers to fill out the surveys.

"We want to make it easy, we want to make it efficient, we want to make it the gold standard again," she said.

One farmer questioned the release of USDA's monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) reports, suggesting that it seems major traders have inside information on those reports before they are released. Rollins said she doesn't know specifics about how those reports are protected from early release, but added she would look into it.

Asked about how those data collection efforts will coincide with USDA's reorganization plans, Rollins said too many agency staff work in Washington, D.C., and USDA's goals are to bring those people closer to those they serve.

USDA plans to relocate staff from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) from the Capitol region to St. Louis as early as September. Labor unions, in a lawsuit against USDA's reorganization plans, argue agencies such as NASS will lose a significant share of their workforce in the moves. When USDA moved a large number of staff from the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, both agencies lost a majority of their staff who declined to move. According to the Government Accountability Office, it took about two years for both agencies to rebuild their staff.

Rollins did not address whether staff losses at NASS would affect USDA's ability to improve its crop reports and survey responses.

In her panel discussion, which was off the record, farmers largely praised USDA's "One Farmer, One File" program, with officials citing that the program was able to get Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) payments to 57,000 farmers in a matter of days this spring. At least one farmer raised concerns about how USDA will protect the privacy of data under the "One Farmer, One File" program. Rollins said she intends to go back to USDA staff and "double down" on data privacy protections.

"I don't worry about it under the Trump administration, but I do worry when we leave, when all of that data is there, have we put in all of the right safeguards and walls to make sure," Rollins said. "So, the good news is we have the most incredible team of the smartest people in the world working on it, and this will continue to be a priority."

Speaking at Farmfest, Rollins told the crowd she spent her summers at a Minnesota farm about two hours away from where the show is located.

"This is where I fell in love with agriculture as a very young girl," she said.

See, "New Crop Insurance Rule Ends Prevented Planting Buy-Up, But Aids Beginning Farmers," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Also see, "Labor Unions and Nonprofits File Another Motion to Halt USDA's 'Unlawful Reorganization Plan,'" https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

(c) Copyright 2026 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.