Crop insurance is a popular safeguard for row-crop farmers, but “a lot of the nation’s vegetables and fruit crops aren’t covered,” says Bloomberg in an examination of crop insurance data in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. “Only 34 percent of vegetable acreage [is] covered, and many less common products are not covered by the program at all.”
“In some instances, farmers have chosen not to get insurance. In others, the offerings are limited: Strawberries, for example, have a small pilot program devoted to them. All crops can be insured through a whole-farm revenue-protection program introduced in 2015 that isn’t tailored toward specific harvests.”
Crop insurance has become the major element of the farm safety net since enactment of the 2014 farm law and particularly as a shield against bad weather. Officials at the USDA’s Risk Management Agency, which oversees the federally subsidized insurance system, told Bloomberg that the program is becoming more responsive to farm disasters as it expands to cover more crops — 551 this year. But not every crop has the data — production volumes and market prices — or the interest among growers to justify the cost of developing an insurance policy, said one USDA official.