Crop year 2027 · sign-up deadline Dec 1, 2026

PRF insurance calculator: what your grid would have paid, every year since 1951

Pasture, Rangeland, Forage (PRF) is USDA’s rainfall-index insurance for grazing land and hay ground. Find your grid to see the 2027 premium, USDA’s share of it, and what the policy would have paid in each of the 75 years from 1951 to 2025. Free, no sign-up, all 13,414 grids in 48 states.

By Sigurd Lindquist, a Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) who owns a licensed crop insurance agency. This page sells nothing, asks for no contact details and sends no one to any agent. . Last checked against RMA’s own tool on Oct 14, 2026: 14 of 14 policies priced here matched it to the dollar.

What PRF costs: a worked example

Grid 30454 in Barron County, Wisconsin: 100 acres, 90% coverage, productivity factor 100, April to May and June to July, half in each. Figures at 2027 rates.

What PRF costs for grid 30454: grazing and hay at the same policy
Use of the landCounty base value per acrePremiumUSDA paysYou pay, a yearMost it can pay in a yearYears it would have paidAverage payout a year
Grazing$32.80$305$155$150 $1.50 an acre$2,95244 of 75$261
Haying, non-irrigated$230.00$2,136$1,089$1,047 $10.47 an acre$20,70044 of 75$1,829

Hay ground costs more than grazing land because USDA values an acre of hay higher. Both use the same grid and months, so they would have paid in the same years. Rates differ from grid to grid and month to month, and USDA’s share is not automatic. Use the calculator above for your own land.

PRF sign-up and billing dates for 2027

  • Dec 1, 2026Sales closing date. New policies, and changes to coverage level, months, acres or productivity factor on an existing one, are due at your agent.
  • Dec 1, 2026Acreage report due, with any lease signed and in hand. Without a report there is no coverage for the year.
  • Jan 1 to Dec 31The coverage year. Each pair of months you insure stands on its own.
  • Sep 1, 2027Premium billing date. The premium is earned when the acreage is reported and billed no earlier than this. Premium you owe is taken out of any payment due you, even one paid before this date.

A PRF policy is continuous. If you are already insured and change nothing, it renews on its own with the same elections. Premium still unpaid on the termination date, Dec 1, ends your eligibility.

A payment, when one is owed, is issued “not later than 60 days following the date RMA publishes the final grid index” for that interval (Rainfall Index Basic Provisions, section 8(d)). No claim is filed. The dates above are read from USDA’s 2027 actuarial files.

USDA’s share of the premium

USDA pays 59% at the 70% and 75% coverage levels, 55% at 80% and 85%, and 51% at 90%. You pay the rest, plus an administrative fee per crop and county that this page leaves out.

USDA’s share of the premium by coverage level
Coverage levelUSDA paysYou pay
70%59%41%
75%59%41%
80%55%45%
85%55%45%
90%51%49%

The share is not automatic. It needs form AD-1026 on file with the Farm Service Agency by the premium billing date (Basic Provisions, section 11(h)). Beginning and veteran farmers and ranchers get a larger share. In six states, native sod broken in recent years gets 50 points less (see below). The premium rate itself is different for every grid, every interval and every coverage level.

How payouts compare with the premium

$1 of full premium would have paid back a middle $0.87, about the same on every grid and month. Open for the table by month.

On the full premium, no grid, month or coverage level stands out. Run every rate USDA publishes for 2027 over 1951 to 2025, and $1 of full premium would have paid back a middle $0.87. Nine in ten of the 722,380 grid, interval and coverage combinations fall between $0.78 and $0.89.

You do not pay the full premium: USDA pays 51% to 59% of it, if you qualify. Any average over the record is made of a few big years and many small or empty ones, and it says nothing about next year.

The months with the highest rates bring the most dollars of USDA’s share per $100 of protection. On 7,899 of 13,307 grids, the interval that comes out furthest ahead of your share is one of the grid’s two driest. That is why winter and fall months look good on a payback table. It is not a sign they cover the grass you grow.

Each pair of months across the country, at 90% coverage: the middle grid among those USDA rates for that pair.
MonthsNormal precipitationPremium per $100Years under 90% of normal, of 75Grids rated
January to February3.08 in$17.403513,414
February to March3.44 in$16.003513,307
March to April4.53 in$14.643413,307
April to May5.77 in$14.433413,150
May to June6.57 in$13.663412,896
June to July5.98 in$13.793312,913
July to August5.42 in$13.593312,809
August to September5.15 in$15.993512,860
September to October4.93 in$19.113613,150
October to November4.22 in$18.303613,256
November to December3.63 in$18.913613,414

New for 2027

A new precipitation record, a 25% cap on January to February, and livestock required on grazing acres. Open for the details and RMA’s wording.
  • A new precipitation record. The index now comes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), in place of the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) data used through 2026 (USDA RMA, April 30, 2026). The record starts in 1951, not 1948, and each interval is measured against its 1951 to 2025 average (RMA’s processing note). The grids did not move. Every past year on this page is the figure from that new record.
  • January to February is capped at 25%. In USDA’s 2027 files, 3,067 of the 3,070 counties with PRF limit that interval to 25% of a policy’s value. Every interval needs at least 10%, and the others allow up to 50%, 60% or 70%, by county. The calculator applies your county’s limits.
  • Grazing land needs livestock on it. The 2027 Crop Provisions, section 4(j): “For the intended use of grazing, you must have an insurable interest in enough livestock grazing the acres that would equate to at least 25% of the stocking rate for the insured acres.” RMA’s question-and-answer sheet on the rule says: “Failure means no indemnity is due and full premium is owed.” The livestock can graze the acres at any time in the crop year. Records are asked for on request, not filed, and kept three years. Only natural causes excuse a shortfall. Hay ground is not under this rule. The producer works out the number with the agent, from the FSA National Crop Table or a state or federal lease (RMA stocking rate questions).

Before you sign

  • You need an insurable interest: you own or lease the ground, and for grazing, the livestock. A lease must be signed and in by the acreage reporting date.
  • PRF covers perennial grass, pasture and hay. Forage planted every year is a separate policy, Annual Forage.
  • Land in the Conservation Reserve Program or another USDA program that bars haying and grazing, ground with no record of your share, and an allotment with zero authorized use cannot be insured.
  • Each acre goes in one grid. You pick a point inside the acres and the grid and county follow from it. Land that lies across a grid line can go in either grid or be split.
  • You do not have to insure every acre.
  • One coverage level and one productivity factor per county, use and practice. The same acre cannot be insured for both grazing and haying.
  • A third party may not pay your premium in return for part of the payment. RMA is investigating such deals.

What PRF does not do

“This policy does not directly measure, capture, or utilize any actual crop production, including any of your actual crop production. For example, it is possible for you to receive an indemnity payment without suffering a loss of actual crop production. However, you may experience a loss of crop production and not receive an indemnity payment.”USDA RMA, Rainfall Index Basic Provisions (27.1-RI), section 13
  • It pays on one thing: precipitation in your grid over two months, against that grid’s long-run average. Not on hay yield, cattle weights, heat, hail or a drought declaration.
  • The grid is a quarter of a degree on each side. The figure is worked out for the whole grid from weather stations. Your own gauge does not count, and a neighbor a mile away can be in a different grid.
  • Precipitation and grass do not move in step. On three university ranches in Kansas and Nebraska, swapping the grid figure for precipitation measured at the site would have cut the mismatch by only 5% to 9% (Yu and others, 2019). On California rangeland, insuring one interval, a forage loss went unpaid 31% to 46% of the time (Keller and Saitone, 2022).
  • Native sod: in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, native sod broken in recent years gets 65% of the protection and 50 points less of USDA’s share (Crop Provisions, section 4(g)). The calculator does not apply this. It shows a note in those states.

How this page figures it

The inputs are USDA’s own, copied unchanged: premium rates, county base values, interval limits, subsidy rates and dates from the 2027 Actuarial Data Master, and each grid’s index history from the service behind RMA’s PRF tool. The arithmetic is the policy’s:

protection per acre  = county base value x coverage level
                       x productivity factor
interval protection  = protection per acre x acres x share
                       x part of the policy in the interval
interval premium     = interval protection x premium rate
you pay              = interval premium - USDA's share
payment              = interval protection
                       x (coverage x 100 - index) / (coverage x 100)
                       when the index is under coverage x 100

Dollars are rounded the way RMA’s own calculator rounds them: protection per acre to the cent, each line to the dollar. An insurer’s figure can differ by a dollar or two. Last checked against RMA’s own tool on Oct 14, 2026: 14 of 14 policies priced here matched it to the dollar.

What the history is: this year’s rates, this year’s county values and this year’s precipitation record, run over each past year. RMA’s own calculator does the same. It is not a record of what PRF paid. Rates, values and the data source were different then, and the average each year is measured against moves every crop year.

Which county a point is in comes from the Census Bureau’s county lines. Within about a mile of a county line the page asks instead of guessing, because the county sets the dollars. 9,601 of the 13,414 grids lie across more than one county.

What it leaves out: Hawaii, which has its own program and grids. The administrative fee. The native sod rule. Any year USDA has not finished publishing is listed and kept out of every total.

A ZIP or town you type is sent to a free place-lookup service (Open-Meteo) to find it on the map. The page counts visits and which grids are opened with Google Analytics, unless your browser asks not to be tracked. Nothing you type is stored anywhere but your own browser. Any crop insurance agent can write PRF: USDA’s agent locator. For the official grid for your land, use USDA’s grid locator. Your policy and your agent’s quote are what count.

Questions ranchers and hay growers ask

What is PRF insurance?

Pasture, Rangeland, Forage (PRF) is a federal crop insurance policy for grazing land and hay ground. It pays when precipitation in your grid, over a two-month interval you chose, comes in under a set share of that grid’s long-run average. You pick the coverage level, from 70% to 90%, and how to spread the policy across the intervals. USDA pays 59% at the 70% and 75% coverage levels, 55% at 80% and 85%, and 51% at 90% of the premium.

When is the PRF deadline for 2027?

The sales closing date is Dec 1, 2026. The acreage report is due Dec 1, 2026. The premium is billed no earlier than Sep 1, 2027.

How much does PRF cost per acre?

It depends on the grid, the months, the coverage level and the county’s value for grazing or hay. For grid 30454 in Barron County, Wisconsin, 100 acres at 90% coverage with the policy split between April to May and June to July, the producer’s share after USDA’s comes to $150 a year ($1.50 an acre) for grazing land and $1,047 ($10.47 an acre) for non-irrigated hay, plus the administrative fee. Enter your grid and acres above for your own figure.

Is PRF insurance worth it?

On the full premium, the record treats every grid, month and coverage level about the same: over 1951 to 2025 at 2027 rates, $1 of premium would have paid back a middle $0.87. USDA pays 51% to 59% of the premium if you qualify. Payments come in a few dry years, with many years of nothing between. It is worth more to someone whose grass or hay follows precipitation in the months insured.

What are the PRF intervals?

Eleven two-month intervals: January to February, February to March, March to April, April to May, May to June, June to July, July to August, August to September, September to October, October to November and November to December. You insure at least two, no month in two of them, each with at least 10% of the policy. January to February is capped at 25% in 3,067 counties.

Which months should I insure?

The policy needs at least two intervals, no month used twice, each between your county’s minimum and maximum. Past that it is your call, and no record can make it for you. RMA’s handbook puts it this way: choosing intervals “when precipitation is not needed for the insured crop or when precipitation does not normally occur is not an effective use” of the policy. The calculator shows each interval’s normal precipitation in inches.

Is PRF drought insurance?

No. It pays on a precipitation index for a grid, two months at a time. A dry summer after a wet spring, a drought declaration, heat or a short hay crop do not trigger it. Only the index does, and only for the months you insured.

How big is a PRF grid, and which one am I in?

A grid is a quarter of a degree of latitude by a quarter of a degree of longitude: about 17 miles north to south, and 11 to 16 miles east to west, narrower the farther north. There are 13,414 of them with PRF offers in 48 states. Type a ZIP, a town or coordinates above to see yours. On a policy, the grid follows from a point you pick inside the acres you insure.

Why are these numbers different from what PRF paid in past years?

Because they are not a payment history. Every year is run at 2027 rates and county values, on the precipitation record USDA publishes for 2027, which starts in 1951. Policies through 2026 were paid on a different data source, with the rates of their own year. RMA’s own calculator works the same way.

Do I need livestock to insure grazing land?

Yes. Starting with the 2027 crop year, land insured for grazing needs livestock you have an interest in, grazing those acres at some time in the year, equal to at least 25% of the stocking rate. Fall short, for any reason but a natural cause, and no payment is due while the full premium is still owed. Hay ground is not under the rule.

Why did my neighbor get a PRF payment when I did not?

Three usual reasons: they are in a different grid, they insured different months, or they chose a higher coverage level. Each interval pays on its own, so one dry pair of months can pay a neighbor who insured it and miss you if you did not.

When would I be paid?

Not later than 60 days after RMA publishes the final index for the interval, with no claim to file. Premium you owe is taken out of a payment first.

PRF by state

Counties and grids with PRF offers for 2027, by state. A grid on a state line counts in both. Each state has its own page with every county’s values, and each county its own page with its grids and their record. New to PRF? How PRF works, in plain words.