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Precision crop insurance, priced field by field.
Aon and SAGE are launching a precision crop insurance program for corn and soybean growers. With AgriCap, it will be available in 15 states for the 2027 crop year, matching coverage to the underlying risk at the field level.
Linn County, Iowa: every field read on its own, instead of priced as the county average.
Priced on the average risk in each county, even though risk varies widely from field to field.
From the announcementAon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, and SAGE, an AI-native agricultural risk intelligence company, today announced the launch of a new precision crop insurance program in the U.S. to assess agricultural risk more accurately and help price insurance more effectively.
In collaboration with AgriCap, a specialty agricultural insurance provider, the program will be available to corn and soybean growers in 15 states for the 2027 crop year. The coverage is designed to complement federal crop insurance by more precisely matching coverage to the value being protected and the underlying risk at the field level.
Federal crop insurance which covers nearly 90 percent of U.S. corn and soybean acreage, is priced on the average risk in each county, even though risk varies widely from field to field, leaving many growers paying premiums that may not reflect their individual risk.
The new program is being tested through a four-county pilot developed by the Resilience in Agricultural Lending and Insurance Coalition (RALIC), with funding provided in part from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The pilot encompasses more than one million agricultural acres, representing approximately 12 percent of Michigan farmland.
Aon brings leading Risk Capital data and analytics, capabilities and expertise to translate SAGE’s insights into insurance solutions and connects those solutions with the capital needed to support them.
SAGE has built deeply contextualized AI models that combine the observation and understanding of soil, water, weather and human interaction. By combining these complex data sets that historically could not be analyzed together at scale, patterns of risk and resilience can be understood that were previously difficult or impossible to identify.
The Michigan pilot represents an early demonstration of how field-level agricultural intelligence can support insurance solutions at scale. Building on those insights, Aon and SAGE are working with AgriCap as a preferred insurance partner for the 2027 crop cycle, providing an early proof point for a model designed to extend beyond a single geography, crop or project.
Growers and insurance agents interested in the precision crop insurance program can learn more ahead of the spring 2027 sign-up period at sage.ag.
How it comes together
Three partners. One product.
Designs and finances new insurance products around that field-level risk.Brings the product to growers through its network of crop insurance agents.
How it fits
Alongside federal crop insurance, not instead of it.
The coverage is designed to complement federal crop insurance, more precisely matching coverage to the value being protected and the underlying risk at the field level.
Farmers have understood that every field is different,
but the ability of the USDA and the insurance industry to understand those differences at scale has been a significant obstacle.
The SAGE AI engine brings together billions of datapoints together in a way that simply wasn’t feasible before advancements in AI, creating a much clearer picture of the factors influencing risk and resilience from the individual field to the entire U.S. corn belt.
Field-level intelligence provides an opportunity to reward farmers' investments in resilience through better crop insurance options.
With this new approach, we can translate what is happening on the land
into risk signals that the insurance market can understand and act upon.
When we make resilience visible, it can be underwritten, which means we can syndicate capital behind it.
For 17 years, I've worked directly with farmers,
pushing the limits to ensure they have the freedom to do the right thing and the freedom to operate. We've built exactly the right tool to accomplish that.
SAGE brought never-before-available intelligence to the acre, while Aon's Agriculture Resilience Center brought the vision to turn it into something that can be underwritten and priced, and AgriCap brought a mission to distribute next generation crop insurance solutions to farmers and agents. We can't wait to put it in farmers' hands ahead of the 2027 planting season.
AgriCap has long been an innovator in agricultural insurance,
offering individual crop insurance for farmers since 2017 with captive insurance offerings.
Now, with the risk intelligence that SAGE provides we can finally offer the right insurance at the right price at the individual field level to farmers across the Corn Belt.
Crop insurance is central to American agriculture
and RALIC developed this pilot to test whether insurance could better recognize farmers who build resilience on their land.
The work in Michigan is showing real demand from growers, and we are looking forward to helping expand precision crop insurance across the corn belt.
I’ve spent much of my life asking ‘what if’ questions about farm-management decisions.
Farmers make those decisions field by field, yet many of the tools we use to manage risk have not historically operated at that same level of detail. Giving farmers more detailed information about their individual fields opens an important new chapter in agricultural risk management.
A farmer beginning a transition need not make that journey alone. Farm Advisors is about putting experienced farmers alongside them, and these next-generation tools can add another layer by helping both the farmer and the mentor better understand what’s happening in their fields. By pairing trusted mentorship with better risk information, we give farmers a stronger foundation for making quality decisions.
Crop insurance is an outdated system
and with today's technology, we shouldn't be protecting our risk like it's 1950.
It's refreshing to see Aon and SAGE take a new look at it, focused on helping farmers manage our risk. Better coverage for how I actually farm would change how I manage capital, and could open up new markets the current system has held us back from. SAGE also turns data scattered across a lot of platforms into a sounding board. That helps me manage at a higher level.
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