The production that you send to our office is used in the 10 year average for your farm, and it is used to establish your insurance guarantee. You are required to keep the evidence for this production for 3 years plus the current crop year. We recommend keeping records for 7 years to line up with your taxes. We also recommend that the records you keep match those reported on your crop insurance production sheet (if you use your yield monitor and mark that on your form, keep your yield monitor records). There are a few acceptable ways to keep track:
1. Load records
2. Weight tickets from the elevator
3. Storage structure (bin) markings
4. Printed records from a combine monitor
5. Precision farming records
If you are keeping track of and reporting your production by farm, it is best to make sure you have written or printed records to show which bushels came from which farm (combine dump log, printed monitor or grain cart records, load logs, bin marks, weight tickets, etc). In a claim or review situation, you should be able to provide at least 2 different types of records to cross reference one another. One of these types should come from a disinterested third party (grain elevator, crop insurance adjuster, etc).
There are specifications for each of these methods, and if you are unsure of how to best keep track of your production, talk to your agent or call our office at 888.481.1342.