of Hawaiʻi's farms
have no federal
crop insurance.

01 — The Scale of the Gap

252 policies is not 252 farms. 37 of them are HIP-WI hurricane endorsements that can only be bought on top of an existing policy, so at most 215 distinct policies underlie the count. The true number of farms is lower still — RMA counts a grower's crop (APH) and trees (TDO) as separate policies, and a farm with coffee on two islands holds two — but the overlap can't be measured from public data (if every tree policy sits on a farm that also insures its crop, roughly 130). That ceiling is what the headline's "~97%" (96.7% on 215 policies) rests on; on a straight policies-per-farm basis the figure is 96%.

For every 26 farms in Hawaiʻi, just one holds a federal crop insurance policy. In North Dakota — the nation's most insured state — the ratio runs the other direction: nearly 8 policies per farm. That is not a rounding error. It is a 207-fold gap that reflects a federal system calibrated to continental grain agriculture, not island-scale diversity. And the count is not growing: 270 policies in 2023, 253 in 2024, 252 in 2025 (CY2026 is still being reported).

Behind the 252-policy headline is another dimension: even those farms that do have federal coverage are largely confined to two crops. The remainder of Hawaiʻi's rich agricultural landscape — taro fields, avocado orchards, papaya groves, leafy green operations, aquaculture ponds — enters each hurricane season completely uncovered.

02 — Public Money, Narrow Reach

$2.18M federal subsidy.
239 policies.

03 — Structural Exclusion

Built for the Corn Belt.
Missing the islands.

Federal crop insurance was designed around a simple actuarial premise: vast acreages of the same crop, across geographically uniform terrain, with decades of loss history to calibrate premiums. The Corn Belt delivers all three. Hawaiʻi delivers none of them. Microclimates shift every few miles of coast and elevation. A farm on the Hilo rainy side and a farm on the Kona dry side face completely different risk profiles — and neither fits the national actuarial tables built for Kansas wheat fields.

This is not an oversight. It is a structural consequence of designing a nationwide program around the agricultural profile of nine Midwest states. When Congress or USDA has incrementally expanded the program — adding WFRP for diversified small farms, adding Micro Farm for sub-$350K operations — the statutory authority to cover Hawaiʻi's crops exists. The mechanisms to deliver it do not. The result is a safety net with a Hawaiʻi-shaped hole.

04 — Concentration

Two crops.
Three-quarters
of all coverage.

05 — The Crops Left Out

No crop-specific policy
exists for these crops —
only whole-farm or NAP.

Value of production: HDOA 2023 Top 15 Commodities. Coverage classification: USDA RMA FCIC plan availability. Basis = top-15 value ($444.4M); methodology in docs/METHODOLOGY.md.

Taro is the cultural cornerstone of Hawaiian agriculture — and it has zero federal coverage. Seed crops, the state's single largest commodity at $115M, sit entirely outside the FCIC program — as do algae, basil, eggs, and lettuce. Coffee, macadamia, and cattle are the only programs with meaningful uptake. Farmers growing avocado, mango, breadfruit, and lilikoi cannot buy federal crop insurance for their main crops at any premium level — the actuarial product simply does not exist.

07 — Geography

One island carries
92% of all policies.

Hawaiʻi County — the Big Island — held 231 of the state's 252 policies in CY2025. That concentration reflects the dominance of coffee and macadamia nuts, both of which are grown almost exclusively on the Big Island. Oʻahu (Honolulu County) recorded just one policy in 2025 and zero in 2026, despite being home to substantial nursery and vegetable operations. Kauai tells a different story: just 2 policies, but $34.5M in insured liabilities — almost certainly a single large tree-crop operation that skews the county's numbers dramatically.

08 — How the Plans Work

Eight programs.
Two that reach
Hawaii at scale.

Federal crop insurance is not one program — it is a family of actuarial products, each built for a different farm type. Understanding why Hawaii has virtually no enrollment in the most flexible plans requires knowing what each plan demands of the farmer who tries to use it.

09 — Plans Designed for Small Diversified Farms

Built for Hawaii.
Used by nobody.

USDA created two insurance products specifically engineered for small, diversified farm operations — exactly the profile that defines Hawaiʻi agriculture. Both programs are available in statute. In practice, Hawaii has one participating farm. The products exist. The farmers exist. The connection has not been made.

10 — Proven Demand, Real Risk

When a plan fits,
farmers enroll.
And file claims.

11 — The Other Safety Net — NAP

For most Hawaii crops,
the only option is
disaster relief.

The Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), administered by FSA rather than RMA, is the de facto safety net for taro, vegetables, herbs, and most of Hawaii's diversified crops — because no federal crop insurance product covers them. NAP is not actuarially rated insurance: farmers pay a flat service fee, enroll before the crop year, and are paid only after an individual loss exceeds 50% of expected production (less with buy-up) — no disaster declaration required, but no coverage of ordinary yield risk either.

12 — Beyond Insurance: The Ad-Hoc Fallback

When insurance doesn't fit,
relief arrives after the fact.

Because most of Hawaii's crops can't be insured, the money that actually reaches farms after a bad year comes through the Farm Service Agency: ad-hoc disaster programs, livestock forage relief, conservation payments, and one-off congressional packages. Since 2008, FSA has paid $205.6M to Hawaii payees across every program — unpredictable, after-the-fact money that substitutes for the insurance market that never developed.

12 — The Island Context

Last place is still
ahead of every
US territory.

Hawaiʻi ranks 46th of 50 states — but it is simultaneously the only US island jurisdiction with any federal crop insurance at all. Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have zero FCIC policies. Their farmers rely entirely on NAP (the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program), a flat-fee, lower-indemnity fallback that pays only on losses above 50% and cannot substitute for actuarially rated coverage. Hawaiʻi's 252 policies, meager as they are, represent the ceiling for US island agriculture — not the floor.

This context matters for policy. Hawaiʻi's advocates are not arguing for parity with North Dakota. They are arguing for a system that reaches beyond two tree crops on one island, to the full breadth of a tropical agricultural economy that feeds residents, sustains culture, and operates entirely without the backstop that mainland farmers take for granted.

NAP = cumulative unique recipients & payments 2006–2025 (EWG / FSA FOIA Payment Files). Puerto Rico has more farms than Hawaiʻi and zero federal crop insurance — its farmers lean entirely on NAP disaster relief. American Samoa's 7,157 farms include 6,258 noncommercial/subsistence operations (avg 1.3 acres).

Research & advocacy by
supersistence.org