Area based insurance contracts have long been offered to crop producers as an option for risk management. However, the take-up rate for such programs remains low. In this paper, utilizing RMA unit-level corn yield data and NASS county-level corn yield data, we investigate roles of systemic risk and premiums subsidies in producers' choices between area and individual insurance contracts. We find that, on average, systemic risk explains slightly more than one third of total unit yield variability. Systemic risk is high in the Southern and Western Corn Belts and its geographic distribution matches well the geographic distribution of county yield variance. Systemic risk increases with both beneficial and stressful heat accumulations, frequency of drought, and land quality. We also study the lower bound on subsidy rate for area insurance when normalized by that for individual insurance such that the expected net returns to area yield insurance equals the expected net return of individual yield insurance. We find that this lower bound is negatively correlated with systemic risk. Producers in high systemic risk counties will require fewer subsidies to possibly choose area insurance over individual insurance. Moreover, we find that were transfer maximization a producer's only concern then the current area subsidy rate might be a major deterrent for producers to choose low coverage level area insurance. Raising the area insurance subsidy rate might be a feasible option to induce more area insurance demand because the transfer-equalizing area insurance subsidy rate exceeds 100% for only a small fraction of producers.
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