Representatives of several lobbying groups testified Wednesday at a House hearing on crop insurance ahead of the 2023 farm bill, describing the program as one of the best tools available to protect farmers from crop losses, regardless of farm size.
Currently the U.S. government pays out more than $7 billion annually in crop insurance subsidies, with farmers and ranchers receiving a roughly 60 percent premium discount on their insurance policies. A 2019 study found that the largest 10 percent of farms received more than 60 percent of all subsidy benefits.
But in prepared remarks to the House Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management, crop insurance professionals and growers’ associations evoked past decades when the federal crop insurance subsidy program was less robust and small farmers suffered. Speakers also said the program offers important protections against extreme weather and fallout from the war in Ukraine.
Bob Haney, executive director of AgriSompo North America, told subcommittee members that federal subsidies for crop insurance were better for farmers than the “ad hoc” disaster payouts that were more common in the 1980s and 1990s. “Our industry protects all types and sizes and covers 130 different commodities,” he said in a written statement. “We believe crop insurance is one of the best tools to protect farmers against Mother Nature … and is a farmer’s first line of defense against climate change.”
Kathy Fowler, representing the Crop Insurance Professionals Association, pointed to the war in Ukraine and the threat of a global food crisis. “There can be no doubt that U.S. farm and ranch families will be called upon once again to step up to the plate and do all that we can to feed a growing and hungry world,” she said.
Tom Haag of the National Corn Growers Association noted in his remarks that during the run-up to the 2018 farm bill, his group’s priority was to “maintain support for a robust crop insurance program.” That priority continues with this farm bill, he said.
The remarks were in contrast to those from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which in a recent study said that a cap on crop insurance subsidies could save billions of dollars. It maintained that small farmers would not be adversely affected by a subsidy cap, and that large commodity farms could afford to buy insurance without the subsidies.