An Assessment of the Interaction between High Tunnels and Crop Insurance for Specialty Crop Producers

Protective covers, such as high tunnels, are being used by specialty crop producers to enhance production quality and yields, expand or growing seasons, and protect crops from some extreme elements. While growing in popularity, one barrier to larger utilization includes the uncertainty regarding their practices and benefits. This paper recognizes that high tunnels can be used as a form of risk management and examines the relationship with crop insurance in order to better define optimal risk management strategies.