The recent spell of extremely cold weather in the Midwest’s wheat-producing states reaffirms “the need for a 2018 farm bill and strong federal crop insurance program,” declared the High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal. “Temperatures that dipped as low as 40 degrees below zero did plenty of damage this past week in the central and southern Plains and southern Midwest,” the paper said, quoting Radiant Solutions, a data collection and analysis company.
“To the best of our ability, wheat growers do what we can to mitigate risks on our farms,” said Gordon Stoner, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers and a farmer in Outlook, Montana, according to the paper. “However, we are still at the mercy of Mother Nature, and strong farm bill safety net programs, like crop insurance, can help enable us to farm another year if hit by a devastating weather disaster.”
The White House had initially released a budget in May that cut crop insurance — a program whose premiums are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers — a combined $29 billion over 10 years. But in front of a friendly crowd Monday at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention, Trump said crop insurance was safe. He said he will work with Congress for a 2018 farm bill “that delivers for all of you — and I support — a bill that includes crop insurance.” Trump responded to the standing ovation by adding, “I guess you like it.”
But the crop insurance program is controversial. The free-market American Enterprise Institute released a report this week that found that farms in “the top 10 percent of the crop sales distribution received approximately 68 percent of all crop insurance premium subsidies in 2014, and that farms in the top 2 percent receive approximately $50 per acre in crop insurance subsidies, more than four times higher than the average per-acre subsidy of $12.28.”
As Congress expanded the role of crop insurance over the past couple of decades, the cost of the federally subsidized program tripled, to $9 billion annually over the past five years.