When Randy Dowdy picks up the phone to call his crop insurance agent this time of year, it’s not to see if he can shave premiums — it’s to make sure one tough season can’t threaten the future of his farm. He and fellow national yield champion David Hula want more farmers thinking that same way. They are optimistic that with some attention to the details, growers can put their operations on stronger footing.
Dowdy and Hula hold to a simple, practical blueprint: run the farm with the same financial discipline as any other serious business. That starts with a written budget and continues with a crop insurance plan that’s built around each of their farms’ true risk—not just what feels comfortable when the premium bill arrives.
Dowdy farms in Georgia, where tropical systems are a fact of life, not a rarity.
“For us, it’s not a matter if we’re going to get a hurricane or tropical storm, it’s how many we’re going to get and will we be on the edge or will we be Bullseye central,” he says. “I can’t sleep at night knowing I’ve got $800,000-plus at risk and not have some kind of backstop on it.”
That backstop for both growers is crop insurance. Hula is concerned by how often it’s still treated as a soft target when growers start trimming expenses.
“Growers, if they’re doing budgets—which I know most growers don’t do a budget, unfortunately—but they need to do a budget,” he says. “The sheer cost of production is so high and the risk is there. We all got to service debt. We cannot afford to cut out crop insurance.”
A Working Budget, Not a Guess
Both Dowdy and Hula believe that most operations are simply too big and too leveraged to rely on “gut feel” budgeting. When total corn production costs push into the $600 to $1,000 per acre range, they say every line item needs to be accounted for and challenged.
Hula encourages farmers to use this time of year – winter meeting season – as a springboard to upgrade their financial discipline.
“Growers need to try to capture at least three things when they go to these winter meetings,” he says —whether it’s “something new to try or somewhere to help fine‑tune their budgets.”
For him, that starts with knowing where dollars actually move the needle: fertility, seed, planter performance and risk management. A written budget that ties realistic yield expectations to actual costs per acre then becomes the framework for his every decision – from which hybrids to plant to what coverage levels to buy.
Crop Insurance as a Strategy
Dowdy and Hula say crop insurance should be viewed as the core of a risk management strategy designed around each operation’s exposure.
Dowdy explains how he has traditionally built his coverage and how that thinking is evolving.
“In a normal year we do enterprise [coverage], and normal insurance gets us to that 75% or we buy up 80%,” he says.
After talking with his crop insurance agent, Dowdy is now also considering the benefits of Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) and Enhanced Coverage Option (ECO).
“He’s talking about the SCO version of it, getting coverage to 86% and then you can go with the ECO version to get it up into that 90‑plus‑percent range. And it’s affordable,” Dowdy says.
For Dowdy, the insurance structure matters too. While enterprise units can help manage premium costs, he believes his farming geography demands a more granular approach.
“We may farm ground 60 miles apart,” he says. “I’ll buy optional units just to keep individual farms’ coverage because of the proximity. I go ahead and spend that $75 to $80 an acre, and it helps me sleep at night knowing I got that coverage.”
His takeaway: Don’t stop at the base policy without taking a deeper look. Sit down with your agent and run the numbers on unit structure, SCO and ECO to find a package that realistically protects your cost of production, not just your comfort level with the premium.
Managing Quality and Catastrophic Risk
The risk picture doesn’t end with yield outcomes. Dowdy stresses that in his environment, a lack of crop quality can be just as damaging as outright yield loss.
With his full‑season beans often ready for harvest in late August or early September—smack in the middle of hurricane season—the window for disaster is wide open.
“If it’s 90 degrees outside and it’s hot and wet, those beans will rot right before your eyes,” Dowdy explains. “It’s a quality issue as much as it is just a wind issue.”
Corn brings its own headaches when storms hit hard late in the season.
“If corn goes down, you aren’t going to get it all,” Dowdy says. “Now, there’s some manufacturers that say, ‘you can use our head, we’ll get it all.’ I call BS on that. I don’t want to have to deal with the process of trying to pick it up and harvest it anyhow.”
Dowdy and Hula’s recommendation: build quality risk directly into your budgeting and insurance conversations. Know how your policies treat quality issues and lodging, and be realistic about what you can—and can’t—salvage when a storm hits.
Population and Fertility: Trimming Where It Makes Sense
While Dowdy and Hula believe crop insurance is the wrong place to cut, they both say there are smart, numbers‑driven opportunities to manage input costs—especially in seed and fertility.
“For me, the take‑home that I’ve seen is in fertility management—let’s fine‑tune that,” Hula says. That doesn’t mean making across‑the‑board cuts; it means using precision.
“Use soil tests, yield maps and response history to put fertility where it pays and pull it back where it doesn’t,” he adds.
On seed, Hula thinks 2026 could be a year to rethink planting high populations.
“A lot of times we think we’re going to push our crop a little bit more, and maybe plant a little bit thicker,” he says. “This might be the year just to dial it back a bit… just dial it back 2,000 plants per acre. You’re not going to see a big change in harvestability, you’re not going to see a big change in the end result of yield, but you can see a little reduction in cost.”
Dowdy agrees with the direction—but wants growers to test populations boldly enough to get clear answers.
“I’m going to take it one step further,” he says. “When you do 2,000, I just can’t see enough response. I’m going to go to at least 4,000 less plants so I can say, ‘did I move the needle, yes or no?’”
Dowdy uses a simple benchmark to judge whether the population used is delivering ROI.
“What needs to drive people is, are you making 10 bushels a thousand?” he says. “If you’re not making 10 bushels a thousand based off your planting population, we need to consider, are we planting it too thick? Are we just doing that much of a poor job on getting simultaneous emergence? Why not fix that piece first, and then consider the reduction in population.”
The Planter: One Chance to Get It Right
Hula reminds growers that an expensive mistake is a poorly maintained planter. He believe economic pressure should drive you to the shop, not away from it.
This time of year, Hula is disassembling, inspecting and rebuilding his planter, replacing blades and wear parts and checking every row unit. The goal is simple: give every seed the best chance at uniform emergence and early vigor.
“It seems like we talk about the planter and planting a lot, but that’s what gets everything started,” he says. “You can only do that right one time.”
Dowdy and Hula share more recommendations on their podcast Breaking Barriers With R&D and in their discussion on AgriTalk. Catch their conversation at the link below:
