Farmers voice concerns about crop insurance to local lawmakers

Feb 21, 2018

President Trump’s proposed budget cuts funding to the crop insurance program

By Diego Flammini
News Reporter
Farms.com

American farmers are letting their elected representatives know how they feel about President Trump’s budget and its potential impact on the federal crop insurance program.

The President is considering cutting crop insurance funding by $22.4 billion, or about 33 percent, between 2019 and 2028, according to the budget document.

In an industry dictated by weather and shaped by other uncontrollable factors, crop insurance is a very important tool, according to producers.

“Without crop insurance, there’d be no way I’d put my family at risk with the devastation that can happen with a crop failure,” Mike Shane, a farmer and ag lender from Peoria, Ill., said during a Peoria County Farm Bureau meeting with U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth yesterday, according to FarmWeekNow.

Crop insurance also helps farmers access the capital they need to continue producing crops, Shane said.

“There’s no way farmers could borrow money from (lenders) without any backing. With that crop insurance backing, if something happens, they’ll be able to pay the bank back.”

Net farm income is projected to fall by 6.7 percent to $59.5 billion in 2018, according to the USDA. And farmers look to crop insurance to help offset the costs of producing a crop.

“The dollars at risk of putting out one acre of corn is three to four times what it was 10 years ago,” Randy Kron, president of the Indiana Farm Bureau, told Eyewitness News on Friday while U.S. Senator Todd Young visited his farm.

Crop insurance also helps the next generation of farmers start their careers, especially as today’s farmers age and think about retirement.

“Crop insurance is going to be big, especially as the average age of the farmer keeps going up, and we have a lot of younger folks to bring back in (to farming),” Carson Klosterman, president of the North Dakota Corn Growers Association, told the Wahpeton Daily News yesterday.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.