2013 Year in Review: New Policy and Coverage

Crop insurance reached significant and historic milestones in 2013 — both in its formal recognition by Congress as the primary risk management tool for farmers and the volume of protection it offered — according to an article released in the May 2014 edition of Crop Insurance TODAY.

“Again in 2013, crop insurance helped farmers deal with the year’s weather and market risks,” noted authors Keith Collins and Harun Bulut. “Crop insurance was singled out by legislators during the development of the new Farm Bill as the primary program supporting production agriculture and was heralded as indispensable for successful farming today,” they added.

The ability of farmers to rely on the crop insurance policies they had purchased gave them confidence to plant yet another year of near record total production, the authors explain. “Farmers were able to plant 325 million acres in the spring of 2013, down slightly from a year earlier but four million [acres] above the previous five year average.”

The article points out that looking to the future, the public can rest assured that crop insurance will be in place to provide financial stability for the many small, family farms that comprise the core of U.S. farm production. “Crop insurance will ensure that when the repeated disasters of recent years strike again, as they most assuredly will, U.S. farmers will be able to bounce back to produce again at high levels the food, feed, fiber and energy crops which the U.S. and world populations have come to expect and depend [upon],” they said.