Prevented Planting After Buy-Up Elimination: Coverage Level Substitution, Producer Costs, and the Role of Enhanced Premium Subsidies Under the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB)

This white paper examines the economic implications of eliminating prevented planting (PP) buy-up coverage under the Federal Crop Insurance Program and evaluates whether producers can offset lost protection through higher base coverage levels. Using administrative evidence on coverage elections and premium structures, the analysis shows that coverage-level substitution provides only a partial and nonlinear replacement for former buy-up protection and becomes infeasible as producers approach the 85 percent coverage ceiling. Most insured acres were already concentrated at high coverage levels prior to elimination, limiting adjustment capacity for many producers. Observed responses following earlier buy-up removals indicate modest shifts toward higher coverage among former buy-up users, but incomplete restoration of PP protection. Under the 2018 Farm Bill, declining subsidy rates would have rendered substitution prohibitively costly. Enhanced premium subsidies under the One Big Beautiful Bill substantially reduce (but do not eliminate) these cost increases, producing uneven distributional effects that depend on initial coverage positions rather than PP risk alone.