STU ELLIS: Climate change is faster than molasses

Are farmers becoming more focused on climate change? Pretty much.

Is crop insurance keeping up with climate change? Maybe, but very slowly.

Is crop insurance keeping up with regenerative farming practices designed to address climate change? Really, not at all.

What would it take the USDA's Risk Management Agency, which administers the federal government's multi-billion-dollar crop insurance program, to convert its policies, regulations, and philosophy to growing trends in crop production designed to address climate change?

It would likely a complete re-boot.

Bloomberg News published a thought-provoking look at the growing trend toward regenerative agriculture, designed to survive climate change, but how the Risk Management Agency is not flexible enough to support policy holders in such farming practices.

"Like health, car or property insurance, appraisals for losses or damages rely on standards — known as Good Farming Practices — that ensure low yields aren't caused by mismanagement.

"But these rules cannot include a practice that may lower a crop's yield and therefore tend to follow established industrial, monoculture practices. A farmer caught growing different crops between rows or terminating their cover crops too late, for example, is at risk of having their insurance claims denied."

Interestingly, the USDA has been forward in its thinking about climate change, implementing numerous programs designed to address those issues and provide funding to farmers who want to incorporate innovative practices. But so far, the RMA is not yet part of the trend, and that may be the lack of innovative crop insurance policies which are frequently proposed by academic ag economists, and insurance companies.

Just like turning an ocean liner, it would also take a lot of room for the crop insurance industry to turn and resume speed to catch up with policy holders who are farming a bit different than what is prescribed in the adjuster's claims manual.

But the USDA's crop insurance department is not the only entity moving at the speed of molasses. The agricultural lending industry, for the most part, may be at the same speed. There may well be some lenders and farm managers who think out of the box when it comes to working with farmers who are even further out of the box thinkers.

It would also take some inciteful thinking on the part of the farm lending industry to get up to speed on regenerative farming. Farm managers, farm loan officers, and other members of the financial industry would also need the flexibility of having faith in a producer wanting to create a new path to profitability, which did not look like neighboring operations also depending on financing.

If the thermometer keeps rising and storms are increasingly violent, all those financial and risk management services supporting the U.S. food production industry will need to be nimble, and not reject any farming operation just because it resembles a Grant Wood painting, which is the best depiction of regenerative agriculture that can be offered in this space.

The vast majority of farms are not yet there, but some have been for a generation or two. And more will be moving in that direction, if crop input costs rise faster than crop revenue.