Early price lock puts MCO in focus for 2027

September 24, 2026 | Kriss Nelson

A new crop insurance option gives farmers a chance to protect against shrinking margins, but the decision deadline is approaching. The Margin Coverage Option, or MCO, uses changes in county revenue and certain input costs to determine losses. For the 2027 crop, farmers have until Sept. 30 to elect coverage.

Jake Moline, risk management consultant with StoneX, says this year’s early price guarantee is one reason farmers may want to understand how MCO compares with the Enhanced Coverage Option, or ECO.

MCO has already established projected prices of $5.25 per bushel for corn and $12.33 per bushel for soybeans for 2027. ECO won’t establish its projected price until February.

“A grower electing MCO in a high-price year is primarily buying the September guarantee, with margin protection as a secondary feature,” Moline says.

Same band, different trigger

MCO and ECO both provide coverage between 90% and 95% of expected crop value, carry an 80% federal premium subsidy and use county yields. Farmers cannot elect both on the same acres.

The difference is what triggers a payment and when the guarantee is priced.

ECO responds to a decline in county revenue. MCO responds to a decline in county margin, accounting for both revenue and a specified basket of input costs.

MCO’s commodity price is established using an Aug. 15 through Sept. 14 discovery period the year before the crop is grown. ECO establishes its projected prices in February.That means farmers choosing MCO by Sept. 30 know the price on which their MCO protection will be based, but they won’t know what ECO’s February price would or could be.

“Neither product is strictly better; but choosing to forgo the protection MCO can provide today, leaves the grower at risk if new crop 2027 futures decline before February,” Moline says.

Looking back

Because MCO is new, there isn’t a long history of actual MCO payments to compare.

Moline went back 17 years, from 2009 through 2025, and calculated what MCO would have paid under 2027 rules, using Dallas County as an example.

Across those 17 years, MCO produced an average corn indemnity of $26.49 per acre compared with $17.58 for ECO, an $8.91 difference.

For soybeans, MCO averaged $11.51 per acre compared with $9.37 for ECO, a $2.14 difference.

The difference became larger when Moline isolated years in which the MCO price exceeded $5 for corn or $12 for soybeans, the thresholds he used to represent years with relatively high prices when the September guarantee was established.

The 2027 MCO prices of $5.25 for corn and $12.33 for soybeans put both crops into that category.

In those historical comparison years, MCO's average advantage over ECO increased to $17.66 per acre for corn and $7.29 for soybeans.

But the sample is small: seven corn years and six soybean years.

“Treat the direction as informative and the magnitude as uncertain,” Moline says.

Timing can cut both ways

An earlier price guarantee isn't automatically better.

Moline points to 2022 as the clearest example.

The September pricing period would have established a $5.06 MCO corn price. By February, corn had climbed to $5.90 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

ECO therefore would have entered that crop year with a projected price 84 cents higher than MCO.

That's the potential upside farmers give up when making the MCO decision in September. They know today's guarantee, but not what prices will look like when ECO's guarantee is established five months later.

“A grower electing MCO on September 30 is essentially taking the bird in the hand for the 90-95% coverage band. The traditional February average for new crop futures will still be the spring average utilized for both Revenue Protection and SCO (supplemental coverage option) which is also now 80% subsidized and starts where MCO ends and protects the grower all the way down to where their underlying RP policy begins,” Moline says.

Written by Kriss Nelson.

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