Markets & Coverages: Aon and SAGE to Use AI to More Precisely Price Crop Insurance
Insurance broker Aon and SAGE, an agricultural risk intelligence company, are launching a crop insurance program in the U.S. they say will assess agricultural risk more accurately and help price insurance more effectively.
The program uses artificial intelligence to combine data on soil, water, weather and human interaction to generate insurance prices for growers that better reflect their individual risk.
In collaboration with Minnesota-based agricultural captive insurer AgriCap, the firms say the program will be made available to corn and soybean growers in 15 states for the 2027 crop year. The companies have not yet identified which states.
The companies explain that federal crop insurance, which covers nearly 90% of U.S. corn and soybean acreage, is priced on the average risk in each county. However, they note, risk varies widely from field to field, leaving many growers paying premiums that may not reflect their individual risk.
The coverage is designed to complement, not replace, federal crop insurance. Farmers could purchase federal crop coverage for a certain percentage of their expected production, then buy SAGE policies for coverage above that at potentially lower premiums.
According to Progressive Farmer, Aon’s modeling suggests some growers could potentially save $10 to $15 an acre on that additional coverage.
The new program is being piloted 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% of Michigan farmland.
“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,” said Jonathan Sherrill, senior vice president with Aon’s Agriculture Resilience Center. “When we make resilience visible, it can be underwritten, which means we can syndicate capital behind it.”
SAGE has built AI models that combine billions of datapoints to uncover patterns of risk and resilience that were previously difficult or impossible to identify.
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“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,” said Bill Veghte, CEO and co-founder, SAGE.
“Field-level intelligence provides an opportunity to reward farmers’ investments in resilience through better crop insurance options,” said Robert Bonnie, former USDA official and SAGE co-founder.
AI is among the fastest growing technologies in agriculture, according to consulting firm McKinsey’s Global Farmer Insights 2026 report. The report says that about 17% of the world’s farmers now use generative AI in farm-related tasks.
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.