November 2019 - Crop Insurance In My State

This Thursday as you gather around the Thanksgiving table with your family and friends, we hope you pause for a moment to give thanks for America’s farmers and ranchers.

Our farmers work long hours all year long to make the Thanksgiving bounty we enjoy possible.

And farmers are thankful for the Federal crop insurance program.

Crop insurance protects the corn and peas on your table, sweet potatoes in the casserole, pecans and sugar in the pie, even the cranberries in the sauce. The farmer who raised the centerpiece turkey may have protected the land that bird foraged with crop insurance, too.

In total, more than 100 crops are covered by the Federal crop insurance program.

More than one million crop insurance policies protect 90 percent of farmland, providing a dependable risk management tool for farmers of all sizes and many of the foods found at your table, no matter your Thanksgiving tradition.

Producing these crops carries with them a huge amount of risk. Especially in years like these, where weather made planting difficult and harvest impossible for some farmers. Some farmers may not survive what has been an exceptionally tough year. But many others will be able to plant again next spring, thanks to the safety net provided by crop insurance.

Farmers are grateful the Federal crop insurance program gives them an opportunity to invest in their own protection. Farmers and ranchers are required to help fund the crop insurance program, spending $3.5 – 4 billion annually on premiums alone and shouldering billions more in deductible losses.

But crop insurance gives farmers a fighting chance against unpredictable dangers that could jeopardize an entire farm’s future in a moment.

And since it’s run in partnership with the private-sector, farmers do not fear having aid held up by a slow political process. They receive aid in weeks – not years – for their verified losses.

So, as we enter into this season of gratitude, take a moment to celebrate the hard work and dedication that goes into producing America’s food.

My family knows a little about how much farmers are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

During the Dust Bowl, my grandparents Edson and Harriet Durfee fled the disaster in Nebraska and came back east to Chittenango to start again.

Back then, there was no farm safety net. When the Nebraska prairie turned against them, farmers like my grandparents lost it all and had to rebuild on their own.

Today, our family’s Tuscarora Dairy Farm is going strong. I farm with my wife and three sons. We grow corn and wheat and have about 1,000 milk cows.

Our farm is not on the outskirts of town. It’s right in the heart of Chittenango with about a thousand homes nearby.

It’s a great opportunity to continue to connect consumers with agriculture. Most people today don’t have a good understanding of where their food comes from. We run a small vegetable stand to serve the community. It doesn’t make much money, but we do it because it makes our neighbors happy and keeps them connected to farming.

When I think back to the challenges my grandparents faced as they packed up and left Nebraska, it reminds me just how much farming has changed. I think they’d be surprised and pleased at how successful our family farm has become.

We wouldn’t have been as successful without a strong farm safety net. The centerpiece of that safety net is the public-private partnership of crop insurance.

I recently invited representatives from the crop insurance industry to my farm to tell my story and show them how we use crop insurance to manage the weather and price risks that, for my grandparents, were nearly unmanageable.

The large investment required for each acre we plant makes crop insurance a must. Buying insurance helps take out some of the risk on those acres.

When it comes to milk, last year the price was so low that we feared if it continued it would put a lot of stress on our finances.

We bought a dairy revenue protection policy from our local crop growers agent to help mitigate the risk of the volatile dairy market. Fortunately, the price of milk rebounded, and we didn’t need to use the insurance.

Like all farmers, we would rather sell products at a good price than make an insurance claim.

Crop insurance is just like all the other insurance you have. We end up spending a lot of money on insurance, but you can sleep at night knowing if something happens, you are going to be protected partially and you will be able to rebound from it and continue on.

I’d like to thank Congress and the American public for backing a strong system of crop insurance in the Farm Bill. As the political cycle heats up and we head toward the 2020 elections, I hope policymakers will remember just how important crop insurance has become to rural America.

Steve Durfee operates Tuscarora Dairy Farm with his wife and three sons in Chittenango. This op-ed appeared in the Madison County Courier.

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