Study From Minnesota Group Criticizes Federal Crop Insurance
Federal crop insurance in its current form is hurting family farms, the land and rural communities, while benetting big insurance companies, according to a new report from the Minnesota-based Land Stewardship Project.
"Broken and misdirected federal farm policy, like the crop insurance program, is contributing to the loss of family farms and the emptying of rural communities. This is not an inevitable outcome but a choice made by Congress, influenced heavily by major multinational insurance corporations and their allies," concluded the report, which is based on a combination of research of public records and personal testimony from farmers.
The report, "Crop Insurance: A Torn Safety Net," was released as Congress and farm groups are working on a new farm bill, the centerpiece of federal food and ag policy.
The Land Stewardship Project also was critical of crop insurance when the existing farm bill, which expires later this year, was being drafted in 2014.
The organization seeks "to foster an ethic of stewardship for farmland, to promote sustainable agriculture and to develop sustainable communities," according to its website.
Many farm groups and organizations strongly support federal crop insurance, which seeks to protect farmers from "unavoidable risk" associated with bad weather, crop disease and insects. Taxpayers pick up some of the cost, farmers the rest. Crop insurance policies are sold and serviced through private companies. The federal government subsidizes the program to keep it affordable.
The crop insurance agency, including National Crop Insurance Services, the Overland Park, Kan.-based trade association, maintains the program is well run and helps farms of all sizes.
But the Land Stewardship Project report identified what its says are major, fundamental flaws, including:
· Federal crop insurance doesn't have per-farm subsidy limits.
· Federal crop insurance "discourages farming practices that build soil health, increase crop diversification and prevent erosion and nutrient run-off.
· Though farmers have been going backward financially since 2013, "crop insurance companies have seen their profits skyrocket." Work on the new farm bill "provides a prime opportunity to reform crop insurance by placing limits on premium subsidies and ending the exorbitant profit-making insurance corporations enjoy as a result of the publicly funded program," according to the Land Stewardship Project.
Federal crop insurance should be reformed and improved, not scrapped, Randy Krzmarzick, a Sleepy Eye, Minn., farmer who's active in the Land Stewardship Project, told Agweek.
"We're not anti-federal crop insurance," he said. "We think we should all sit down at the table and come up with some common-sense restrictions on what goes into it." The great majority of farmers agrees with that, he said.
To see the report, go to www.landstewardshipproject.org/organizingforchange/cropinsurance.
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