Although I grew up on a farm, I did not fully appreciate how precarious the business of farming was until I was a little older and thinking seriously about getting my own ground and starting my own operation. One incident, in particular, really put the value of risk management in perspective for me.

It was early summer and I was helping my dad build a new barn for our equipment. We started on a Friday and had plans to finish up by Monday, but later during the weekend a storm blew through the area with hail and strong winds; some even estimated that a small tornado was a part of the mix. That storm not only decimated our entire field of crops, but also shredded the barn to nothing. All of our hard work—in the field, on the barn—was for naught.

My family did not have a nest egg to cover the significant cost of the damages. In fact, we had fixed expenses and operating loans tied to those investments. If we had not purchased crop insurance, we would not have been able to recover from the loss of our crops. If we had not purchased another kind of insurance on the building, we would not have been able to recover the cost of replacing the barn.

In that single moment, I realized there are no guarantees and certainly not with farming. We operate at the will of Mother Nature. As a result, we have to do our part to minimize the risk as best as we can, so we can get back on our feet when a disaster strikes.

As my father and others of his generation have taught me, doing our part means taking a conservative and diverse approach to managing the farm. That includes being smart about purchases of equipment and inputs, developing a sound business planand also purchasing crop insurance each year.

Although crop insurance is a backup for all of the other measures taken to be successful, I can say with certainty I would not be able to operate without it. I am a young and beginning farmer with just six years under my belt. My bank would not approve an operating loan without proof of crop insurance. Frankly, after watching my father and neighbors sustain difficult losses, I would not want to think about farming without it.

While farmers must do their part to minimize the economic impact of a disaster, it is also important that policymakers in Washington, D.C. do theirs. This means ensuring federal crop insurance remains widely available and affordable for all farmers across the country, especially young ones like me.

It seems that task becomes more difficult when special interest groups distort the truth about the risks farmers face and especially about the cost and mechanics of the risk management tools in the farm bill that we use to survive the uncertainties and hardships of agricultural production. Right now, those Washington think tanks are launching an inexplicable attack on crop insurance in an effort to dismantle the program by trying to portray it as a give away to farmers and as a tool that only benefits large, established farmers.

In reality, their efforts would only push me, and other young farmers like me, out of the program and out of business. We would not be able to afford crop insurance because the premiums would be too high. We would not be able to afford to farm because banks would consider us too great of a risk without some kind of assurance that we can pay our bills if a catastrophic event wipes out our crops.

This is important to remember as Congress begins the process of writing a new farm bill. With net farm income at one of its lowest points in decades and the average age of the American farmer at the highest, now is not the time to dismantle one of the key pieces of the farm safety net.

Ryan Ueberrhein is a third generation farmer from Douglas County, Nebraska. He farms corn and soybeans.

Although I was born and raised on a farm, the standing rule in our house was I had to spend two years after college pursuing other things. This was not to discourage me from continuing the family farming tradition. Rather, my father wanted to make certain I knew what kind of life I was signing up for. Perhaps another job elsewhere would provide me with greater financial security and stability than one that was beholden to the weather, markets, foreign subsidies, and even lawmakers in Congress.

I recognized the wisdom in my father’s counsel, but after a couple of years, I knew I wanted to get back to the farm. By then I was married and the thought of raising my family in a small, rural town, combined with returning to the family farm, appealed to me. I have been farming on my own for the past nine years.

What I have learned during this time is this: farming is an enormous game of risk management. It’s not if something bad is going to happen, it’s when. I was aware of this reality growing up, but I fully appreciate it now that I am working to sustain my own farm and support my own family.

Droughts, floods, hailstorms, high input prices, unpredictable commodity prices, the uncertainty of what will come out of Washington whether it is talk of cutting the farm safety net during the life of a farm bill or applying a new regulation that increases the cost of doing business; in addition to competing with foreign governments that cheat on their commitments to free trade and fair markets. These are the challenges that farmers face every year. It is a life that is rife with risk and uncertainty.

Today’s depressed farm economy is a prime example. Commodity prices are half what they were a few years ago while the cost of doing business has not followed the same trend. The financial situation for many farming operations all across the country has deteriorated fast and many lenders are nervous about providing financing.

This is why we need strong farm policy and crop insurance to help us manage things beyond our control like a natural disaster or a collapse in commodity prices.

One of the least understood points about crop insurance is that it’s not just for farmers. That’s how we as farmers talk about it, that it’s a way to keep us in business when we suffer a catastrophic loss. That it’s a way to protect our yearly investment when things go wrong. That is all true, of course, but we don’t explain that it is also insurance for every consumer.

Just look at the drought of 2012 – one of the worst droughts on record – that devastated most of the country. There were times in our nation’s history when that kind of devastation would have put thousands of farmers out of business, especially beginning farmers like me, because farm policy and crop insurance wasn’t what it is today. But, that didn’t happen in 2012. Those risk management tools gave us the ability to stay in business, to make it another year. It provided banks with assurance that operating loans would be repaid despite large losses, and in the process it enabled us to keep a stable and affordable food supply for all American consumers because we were able to begin again.

What affects the farmer will affect the consumer. The tools that help farmers stay viable from year to year and decade to decade, allows consumers to get what they need and want in the grocery stores.

We’re all in this together. We have to remember that fact when Congress begins reauthorizing the next farm bill or some lawmaker in D.C. proposes an arbitrary and irresponsible cut to farm policy and crop insurance. These risk management tools serve us all, especially the next generation of farmers. They are a sound and wise investment for America.

Zach Hunnicutt is a fifth-generation farmer from Giltner who raises corn, soybeans, popcorn, seed corn and milo.