For a lot of farmers, the work doesn’t stop with their own acres. Maybe you help a neighbor with planting or harvesting. Maybe you haul grain, do some drainage work, bale hay for someone else, or use your equipment for other jobs when you have time.
Sometimes it starts as helping somebody out. Then, before you know it, it becomes something you do every year. If you’re using your equipment or doing work outside your own farm, your insurance agent should know about it.
Your Farm Policy Needs to Match What You’re Actually Doing
Your farm policy is built around your farming operation. But if you’re also doing work for other people, there may be a few more things to talk through.
Where are you working? Whose property are you on? What equipment are you using? Are you getting paid for the work?
Those details matter. It doesn’t mean every side job requires a completely different insurance policy. It just means your agent needs to understand what you’re doing so your coverage can be looked at correctly.
Custom Work Can Change the Conversation
Custom work is nothing new in agriculture. Farmers have been helping other farmers plant, harvest, bale and haul for a long time. But your operation can change over the years. Maybe you used to do a couple jobs for neighbors and now you’re doing quite a bit more. Maybe you bought another piece of equipment and started picking up extra work. Those are good things to mention when you sit down with your agent.
It can be easy to assume your farm insurance automatically covers whatever you’re doing with farm equipment. Insurance usually isn’t that simple. The type of work, how often you do it and who you’re doing it for can all make a difference.
Sometimes the Work Goes Beyond Farming
We also see farmers use their equipment for work that starts to look more like a separate business. That could be excavation, dirt work, landscaping, drainage or another type of contracting job. You may still consider it something you do on the side, but from an insurance standpoint, the work can be different from what you’re doing on your own farm. That’s where having the conversation matters.
At Harmoning Agency, we work with farmers as well as contractors, excavators, landscapers and other businesses throughout our area. We know that in rural communities, people tend to wear more than one hat. Your insurance needs to know about those other hats too.
Tell Your Agent What You Actually Do
You don’t need to know what policy you need before you call us. That’s our job. Tell us what kind of work you’re doing, what equipment you’re using and whether you’re doing it for yourself or someone else. We can walk through it with you and explain how your current coverage applies.
At Harmoning Agency, we want you to understand what you’re buying. And before we can help protect what you do, we need to understand what you actually do.