Crop year 2027
RMA bulletin PM-26-036 put three things in motion for the 2027 crop year: a wider SCO band, an ARC restriction lifted, and the margin option reshaped. Here is the plain version, and the decisions each one touches.
| What | 2026 | 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| SCO area loss trigger | 86% | 90% |
| SCO with an ARC-CO election | Not allowed | Allowed |
| ECO bands offered | 95/86 and 90/86 | 95/90 only |
| MCO bands offered | Triggers at 90% or 95%, attaching at 86% or 90% | 95/90 only |
| Premium subsidy on all three | 80% | 80% |
Supplemental Coverage Option used to pay in the band between your underlying RP coverage level and 86% of expected county revenue. For 2027 that ceiling moves to 90%. If you carry 85% RP, your SCO band goes from one point wide to five — a meaningful change in both what it costs and what it pays.
This is the one to look at first. A 1-point band was often not worth the paperwork. A 5-point band at an 80% subsidy is a different conversation, and it sits directly under the area where county losses actually cluster.
Under the old rule you could not have SCO on a crop where you had elected ARC-CO. That restriction is gone. Plenty of growers took PLC specifically to preserve SCO eligibility, and that trade no longer has to be made.
If PLC was your choice for SCO reasons rather than price-floor reasons, put the farm bill election back on the table this year.
Enhanced Coverage Option previously offered a 95% and a 90% trigger, both attaching at 86%. With SCO now reaching 90%, those bands would overlap, so ECO becomes a single 95/90 slice — the top five points, and nothing else.
Practically: ECO is now a narrow, high-frequency layer rather than the wide catch-all it used to be. Whether it earns its premium depends on how often your county revenue lands between 90% and 95%, which is exactly what the estimator is for.
Margin Coverage Option is not new — it was first offered for the 2026 crop year, covering from 86% or 90% up to 90% or 95% of expected crop value. It gets the same treatment ECO does for 2027: those overlapping choices collapse into a single 95/90 slice, at 80% subsidy.
What makes it different from ECO is not the band, it is the trigger. MCO pays on margin rather than revenue: county revenue minus a basket of tracked input costs — diesel, natural gas, DAP, urea and potash.
Here is the part worth understanding. Hold input costs flat and MCO and ECO pay exactly the same amount — the cost term cancels out of the math entirely. Input-cost movement is the whole difference between the two products. MCO pays more when fertilizer and fuel run up on you, and less when they fall.
Worth knowing: input costs tend to move with grain prices. In a low-price year fertilizer and diesel often come down too, which trims MCO's payment right when ECO would be paying. MCO is not strictly the better product — it is the better product against a particular risk.
You cannot have both. ECO and MCO occupy the identical band, so it is one or the other on the same crop in the same year. The estimator will show both side by side so you can compare, and it will not let the two figures be added together.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| September 16, 2026 | MCO projected prices are final |
| September 30, 2026 | MCO sales closing for 2027 — earlier than you may expect |
| February 2027 | RP / SCO / ECO projected price set from February futures averages |
| March 15, 2027 | Sales closing for the spring-planted crop election |
Note the September date. MCO closes months ahead of your usual spring decision. If margin coverage is something you want for 2027, it is a fall conversation, not a spring one.
Revisit the ARC/PLC election now that SCO no longer depends on it. Price the wider SCO band before assuming it works the same way it did. Then decide between ECO and MCO on the basis of which risk actually keeps you up — a revenue shortfall or an input-cost squeeze — rather than on which one looks better in an average year.
Sources: RMA bulletin PM-26-036; the 27-SCO, 27-ECO and 27-MCO endorsements; and RMA's 2027 MCO actuarial data. This page is a plain-language summary — the policy documents govern.