Crop Insurance Editing and Proofreading Services

A hailstorm crosses forty fields on a Tuesday in July. Six weeks later an adjuster is standing in one of them trying to establish what the crop would have yielded, what it will now yield, and how much of the difference is hail rather than the dry spring, the thin stand at emergence, or a nitrogen decision made in April. Every one of those has to be separated, and the record made on the day is the only thing that can do it.

We edit what crop insurers and adjusters produce — notice of loss and first inspection records, appraisal and yield determination documentation, cause-of-loss findings, planted and prevented planting records, production and settlement statements, communications to producers about coverage and deadlines, and the responses that follow a disputed appraisal. Our editors work on records made in a field and read in an office.

The appraisal record and its cause-of-loss finding is where a crop claim is settled or argued, and its failure is a yield estimate with no account of what reduced it. A crop has usually suffered several things and only some of them are insured. We work through these so the sample locations are recorded with their coordinates and the method used to choose them, since an appraisal is an estimate from a sample and a sample chosen by walking to the worst part of the field is not an estimate; so the counts are written as counts — plants per unit area, heads per plant, kernels per head — rather than as a converted yield figure alone, because the arithmetic can be rechecked and the judgement cannot; so the insured cause is separated from the uninsured ones with the physical evidence for each, given that hail bruising, drought stress and a poor stand look different in the field and identical in a yield number; so the appraisal date is stated against the crop stage, as the same damage assessed at two stages gives two answers; so the producer's own account of the season is recorded including what they did and when; so anything that limits the appraisal — regrowth, a harvested strip, weather since the event — is stated; so photographs are located rather than merely attached; and so the finding says what proportion is attributed to the insured cause and on what basis. Records made this way settle claims without a second visit.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including producer information, appraisal records and material relating to disputed claims. We are editors rather than adjusters, agronomists or programme administrators, and we offer no view on appraisal, coverage or any claim. What we can do is make the field record answer the office's questions.