South Dakota’s history is deeply rooted in agriculture, perhaps more so than any other state in the union. From the homesteaders who came here in the 19th century, with little more than a plow and a dream, to their descendants who still work the land, agriculture is the way of life for many South Dakotans.

As the president of the S.D. Farm Bureau and a livestock, corn and soybean farmer myself, I can tell you firsthand that our state’s farmers personify a work ethic and a sense of pride and purpose that we are seeing less and less of outside of agriculture these days.

But agriculture is more than just a proud tradition — it’s also S.D.’s top industry, with a $25.6 billion economic impact each year. Our farmers and ranchers generate 20 percent of our state’s economic activity and provide jobs, directly and indirectly, to 122,000 residents.

It’s essential that we preserve S.D.’s farm economy, not just for our own economic well-being, but for all Americans. Our nation’s farmers play an indispensable role in ensuring a safe, affordable and stable food supply. And this role is becoming increasingly important as we struggle to meet the needs of a growing world population. In short, food security is a vital part of our national security and that’s something we need now more than ever.

Unfortunately, our farm economy has seen better days. Our farm families are facing a year of projected below-cost returns on corn, soybeans and wheat. Overall, farm income is also projected to decrease again in 2016. This will be the third consecutive year of declining farm income, following sharp drops in 2014 and 2015 totaling 56 percent in those two years. If the 2016 income projection comes to fruition, it would mark the lowest farm income level since 2002.

This is why having a sufficient farm safety net — with crop insurance as the cornerstone — is more critical than ever. Crop insurance provides protection against the one thing that even the most resilient farmer cannot defeat — the wrath of Mother Nature.

Crop insurance is a unique public-private partnership that not only supports farmers, but eases the burden on taxpayers. Prior to the emergence of crop insurance as the top risk management tool for farmers, natural disasters regularly resulted in very expensive, unbudgeted ad hoc disaster bills from Congress. Now, when disaster strikes, farmers receive an indemnity check.

Let’s be clear, crop insurance is not a handout — far from it. To gain coverage, farmers have to put skin in the game. In fact, since 2000, farmers have spent nearly $30 billion out of their own pockets to purchase crop insurance protection. We only collect an indemnity after we’ve suffered a verifiable loss and met our deductible.

We purchase crop insurance for our family farm every year and have never filed a major claim. But that’s hardly the point. Like our fellow farmers, we purchase crop insurance for the same reasons we purchase home insurance or car insurance — with the hope we’ll never need it. But we’ll keep purchasing it every year because some day we might. Crop insurance gives us peace of mind, and if we ever experience a major crop disaster, would provide us with the resources to keep farming.

Farmers have faced tough times before and rest assured we will get through them again. Old fashioned hard work, innovation and smart farm policies like crop insurance will help ensure that the proud S.D. farming tradition will live on for many future generations, and, in turn, will secure a bright future for us all.

Scott VanderWal is a third-generation family farmer from Volga. He is president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau and vice-president of the American Farm Bureau. This op-ed appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader on August 9, 2016.

If there is one place that, in recent years, overwhelmingly demonstrates the need and importance of U.S. farm policy, it is California. For the past four years, this top agricultural producing state has experienced record drought conditions and for farmers like my husband and me, it has taken a toll on our operation.

We have been growing rice in the Sacramento Valley for 30 years and we have never seen a weather event this relentless. Although the arrival of El Nino has provided much needed rain, the effects are marginal because of the intensity of the drought.

Operating loans are essential for every farmer because of the cost of producing crops, but for my family they have enabled us to keep going to the next year despite depressed yields and prices, and in some cases the inability to plant a crop at all.

And we would not be able to receive this crucial financing without crop insurance and farm policy in place. Farming is an inherently risky business and bankers want assurances that we will be able to pay back the loan if disaster strikes. We were not born into farming – we built our operation from the ground up – so we still have land and equipment payments to make regardless of whether we have a good or bad growing season, or whether a natural disaster wipes out our crops altogether. Crop insurance is something we purchase each year to manage this risk and we only receive an indemnity when we suffer a verifiable loss. Even then, it doesn’t make us whole, but it does soften the blow from a bad year.

It’s important to have this kind of safety net in place for all farmers, all across the country. And, I am always alarmed by the calls in Washington to cut what remains of the farm safety net, especially from those who have no idea what it takes to grow food and fiber. We need risk management tools now more than ever to help us overcome unpredictable weather events.

Additionally, we need policy in place to combat unfair practices with our foreign competitors like China and Thailand whose support for their rice growers far exceeds that of the United States and actually violates agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO). While the U.S. was reforming its policy in the 2014 Farm Bill, other countries were ramping up support for their farmers, in some cases by more than a 100 percent. Their policies are trade distorting and leave American growers at a competitive disadvantage.

American farmers can and do manage extraordinary risks, year in and year out, but we cannot manage the challenges associated with unpredictable and sustained natural disasters, volatile markets, and trade distorting policies of our foreign counterparts without risk management tools like crop insurance and farm policy.

Lawmakers in Washington should consider this reality the next time they want to cut farm policy spending. If they want to continue to have agricultural production in this country, and in California in particular, they need to invest in it.

Lorraine Greco serves on the California Board for the U.S. Rice Producers Association. She grows organic rice with her husband in northern California.

Agriculture has been my passion since an early age growing up on the family farm. I have continued the tradition with a farm of my own.Additionally, I have worked as an agricultural banker for nearly four decades. I started out working in the Farm Credit System, but eventually moved over to the private sector because I wanted to help farmers with estate planning needs in addition to providing credit.

I like to help farmers make the right decisions about their operations, especially as it relates to setting up the next generation of agricultural producers. I want them to be in a good position for the future and prepared for the inevitable challenges that will come their way.

But, I grow more and more concerned about two current trends that I believe threaten the success of agriculture. One is the average age of the American farmer continues to climb while the number of beginning farmers is trending downward. The second trend is the relentless attacks on the farm safety net in Washington that make the uncertainty of farming even more precarious, especially for those young producers just starting.

For example, the 2014 Farm Bill had barely been in place when opponents began proposing cuts – the worst of which appeared in a budget agreement that came together late last year under the cover of darkness and without any consultation with anyone remotely close to farming. The proposal would have essentially gutted crop insurance, which is one of the key elements of the farm safety net.Fortunately, the agricultural community came together and fought off that cut, but this type of attack is a sign of things to come, and it doesn’t bode well for the overall outlook for American agriculture.

A farmer has to invest so much money to grow a crop that they rely on banks for operating loans. Banks would have a hard time making those loans without assurance that farmers would have a way to pay it back if a natural disaster struck.

Crop insurance and farm policy enables everyone – from the farmer to the banker to the taxpayer – to plan for those disasters and overcome them when they happen. If lawmakers continue to try and chip away at this safety net, farmers will not have the ability to survive. This is especially true for young, beginning farmers who have less access to credit and capital.

Therefore, it’s critical that crop insurance remain intact. Investing a future in farming is already a chilling prospect for most young people, given the expense of raising crops, the volatility of the markets and weather events and the low returns on investment. It’s enough to discourage any reasonable person from even trying regardless of whether they are starting from scratch or inheriting the family operation.

As Congress and the White House wrestle with their respective budgets in the coming weeks, I hope good sense will prevail and they’ll leave crop insurance and farm policy alone. Given the current demographics of farming, now is not the time to jeopardize the one thing that farmers can count on.

Larry Kummer is Market President for the Northeast Indiana Horizon Bank.

Many folks might not realize this, but the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill was a turning point in American history, from an agricultural perspective.  Largely gone are the days of government support programs like direct payments.  In their place, and at the center stage of farm risk management tools, is crop insurance.

I had a chance to learn the value of crop insurance first-hand when my cousin and I rented our first farm together in 2012.  We’ve been farming with our family for many years, but felt it was time to expand out and grab some of our own.  Of course, little did we know that the year we kicked off our farming careers would soon become the driest year in decades. We lost all of our dryland crops, roughly forty percent of our acres that year. Thankfully, we had purchased crop insurance.

Unlike days of old, crop insurance is not a federal handout.  In fact, if farmers want to enjoy the protection provided by crop insurance, they must purchase it.  And they do so willingly, spending roughly $4 billion per year out of their own back pockets on crop insurance premiums alone.

For most beginning farmers, crop insurance is nearly a necessity, since banks are hesitant to make loans to farmers who lack sufficient collateral.  Crop insurance allows banks the opportunity to increase lending capabilities with the security of crop insurance.  That’s because with a crop insurance policy in hand, banks feel more secure making those loans to  farmers, since there’s a guarantee of revenue even if the crop fails.

Crop insurance is a public-private partnership whereby individual farmers like me can buy policies for insurance that is specifically tailored for our tolerance to risk and the profile of our farm.  Crop insurance is affordable to farmers, thankfully, because the federal government provides a discount, ensuring that all farmers, young and old, big and small, can purchase policies if they choose to.

Farmers buy crop insurance for the same reason drivers purchase auto insurance:  it offers some degree of stability in times of disaster.  Crop insurance has become, in essence, the nation’s insurance policy for the food supply.  When Mother Nature strikes and farmers lose their crops, those with crop insurance policies in hand can bounce back and plant again the next year.

Crop insurance has also removed some of the financial risk from taxpayers.  Prior to the rise of modern day crop insurance, the wide-scale disaster that we experienced with the great drought of 2012 would have necessitated a very expensive, ad hoc disaster bill from Congress.  Those bills are big and are fully funded by taxpayers.

And while anything is better than nothing when you literally lose the farm, those disaster funds usually took a year or more to arrive in the hands of farmers who needed them.  In my case when I lost forty percent of my crop in 2012, a year would have been much too late.

Crop insurance, on the other hand, is administered by private insurance companies and the indemnity arrives in weeks or a month or two, not years later.  The crop insurance policy I purchased not only allowed me and my cousin to pay back our production loan, but also meet our forward contracting obligations.  And we were able to bounce back and plant the next year.  That’s a smart public policy because it ensures food security for our nation.

Of course crop insurance has its critics, and their sights are squarely on crop insurance, since it’s really the only game in town. And that’s why it’s important for farmers to speak up and let their elected officials know how much they value this risk management tool.

Needless to say, if we hadn’t purchased crop insurance our first year of farming, my cousin and I would be spending years paying off that production loan.  And without this valuable risk management tool available, I’d venture to say many more of America’s farmers would have been joining us.

Scott Reilly farmer and crop insurance agent and lives in Spalding Nebraska.

My farm has been in my family since the mid-1800s. I have seen firsthand how farming has changed over the decades. It is certainly more expensive to farm than when my parents and grandparents and great-great grandparents farmed the land, but one thing hasn’t changed in more than 150 years: farming is an unpredictable business.

Farmers can’t predict the future, but we can make a genuine effort to be smart, informed business owners. We try to make the right decisions and work with what we have. The problem is when ‘what we have to work with’ is ripped out from underneath us. Without crop insurance, many farmers wouldn’t be able to keep farming. Cutting crop insurance would be pulling the rug from underneath agriculture.

Before the modern day crop insurance system, farmers relied on ad hoc disaster relief payments. This was a costly and unpredictable option for all of us – the government, the taxpayer and the farmer, who in some cases may have received a payment too late to avoid bankruptcy.

Congress agreed that crop insurance was the best risk management tool for farmers. In the 2014 Farm Bill, they implemented a crop insurance system that ensured farmers would have access to affordable crop insurance while removing the risk from the taxpayer. In stride, farmers have made operating decisions with the assumption that all the policies of this bill would be in place until the Farm Bill expires in 2018.

Now, in 2015, this proven risk management tool, crop insurance, is in front of the firing squad. I’m not certain why some Members of Congress are willing to turn their backs on farmers now. Washington is nearly 900 miles away from my family farm. From that distance, it may be easy to assume that cuts to farm programs, like crop insurance, would have no effect on farmers, but that’s not an accurate picture.

Crop insurance is the only safety net that most farmers have anymore. Nearly all the cropland in the United States is protected by crop insurance. In Wisconsin, a majority of crop acres are insured, including grain commodities and specialty crops.

Insurance not only allows farmers to face natural disasters and damaging production years without losing everything, but it provides assurance that we can make payments to our banks. The same way any person in this country cannot get a house loan or a car loan without proof of insurance, agricultural banks want the guarantee that farmers can make their payments.

The agriculture economy is struggling. Farm income continues to decline, crop prices are down and inputs continue to rise. The 2015-16 farm year may be a make or break year for many farmers who are ending the year in the red. Forty years ago, a farmer could lose a crop one year and still farm the next. Nowadays one crop loss could end someone’s farming career. In the current state of agriculture, we can’t afford to have another leg chopped off our stool that’s already leaning.

My wife and I have risked our livelihood to maintain the farm for our children and grandchildren, just as my parents and grandparents did for us. Without crop insurance, we would have to quit farming. For the events we can’t predict, crop insurance ensures we won’t lose our multi-generational family farm.

Darrell Crapp is a farmer from Lancaster, Wisconsin. He farms in partnership with his two sons.  This op-ed appeared in the Prairie du Chien Courier Press on January 20, 2016.

The passage of the 2014 Farm Bill was the beginning of a new chapter in U.S. farm policy, putting to rest most of the old farm support programs and replacing them with a reformed farm safety net and its centerpiece: Crop insurance.

Unlike farm programs of the past, only farmers who purchase crop insurance enjoy its protection. In fact, when a farmer purchases crop insurance, they are handed a bill, not a check. Crop insurance is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, with farmers paying tens of thousands of dollars per year on premiums for policies that most of them will hopefully not need.

The Farm Bill was a grand compromise. In exchange for $23 billion in spending cuts programs, Congress required market-oriented reforms to commodity programs and made a five-year commitment to ensure the affordability, availability and viability of crop insurance. Unfortunately, anti-farmer groups are targeting crop insurance with proposed cuts that would seriously hamstring the private sector delivery that is the hallmark of success for the program. That would not only threaten to make the system unworkable for farmers, but also endanger the reliability of our nation’s food supply.

Farmers and farm groups value crop insurance because it combines the efficiency of the private sector with the universal coverage of the public sector. Today, virtually any farmer who wants to purchase crop insurance can, and here in Wisconsin, farmers spent roughly $86 million out of their own pockets to do so this year alone. Nationally, that number usually exceeds $4 billion annually.

Remember the historic drought of 2012 that threatened the nation’s heartland and was compared to the dreadful days of the great Dust Bowl? In the past, a disaster of that magnitude would have triggered an overly expensive and completely taxpayer-funded disaster bill. And although those funds were appreciated, they could take months or years to arrive, oftentimes too late to stop a foreclosure.

Things have changed dramatically now that farmers have much improved access to crop insurance, which now protects more than 90 percent of planted cropland. When the drought laid siege to the nation’s heartland, private sector crop insurance adjusters were quickly on the scene, and indemnity checks were usually in the hands of farmers who had verifiable losses in weeks, not months.

Crop insurance worked so well in 2012 that the nation’s farmers bounced back the next year and produced an enormous bounty of grains. And there wasn’t a single call for a disaster bill.

Farmers are the engines that drive the economy of rural America, and without a sufficient safety net in place – like crop insurance – that entire equation is at risk. That is why not only farmers, but ranchers, input suppliers, processors, and equipment companies have all called on Congress to protect crop insurance from any further cuts.

As a farmer, I can tell you that I take great pride in what I do and I understand the important role I play in producing the nation’s food, fiber, feed, and fuel supply. It seems that farmers and consumers alike here in Wisconsin need to remind our congressional delegation of this fact as well.

Tom Gillis, President, Wisconsin Corn Growers Association

It is no secret that farm demographics demonstrate an alarming trend in American agriculture.

The average age of the American farmer is rising while the number of beginning farmers is decreasing.

These beginning farmers are typically younger than their more established counterparts with less access to credit and capital.

I see this reality every day as a banker at one of the largest agricultural lending institutions in Indiana. In general, all farmers need access to credit to operate and manage a farm, but it is even more crucial for a young farmer because of the enormous startup costs.

It is not an exaggeration to say that farmers borrow more in a single year to grow a crop than some Americans borrow in a lifetime.

And, frankly, banks can be wary of lending to a young farmer just starting out because of the combination of a short credit history and the inherent riskiness of the business.

The one factor in their favor is crop insurance. By purchasing a policy, young farmers enhance their ability to obtain financing because banks have the assurance they can make payments even during tough times.

But opponents of farm policy in Washington are proposing legislation that, if enacted, would threaten the viability of this important risk management tool and make it harder for young, beginning farmers to survive.

These farm policy critics would have you believe that barring producers with large operations from participating in crop insurance helps smaller farmers.

Actually, it does the opposite.

Pooling of risk is essential for any viable insurance program. Because every farmer of every size in every part of the country can purchase crop insurance, the risk pool is large and diverse, which makes crop insurance affordable for all farmers and minimizes the financial exposure of the bank, the farmer and the taxpayer.

Similarly, car insurers want older, more experienced drivers in the same risk pool as those who are younger and potentially more accident-prone.

Eliminating the more established farmers from the mix shrinks this pool and undermines the entire system, making it harder for smaller, beginning farmers to get insurance coverage and, subsequently, agricultural financing.

Statistics already show us that farming is a hard life with fewer and fewer people willing to try it.

Now is not the time to make starting a farm even more difficult by destroying the viability and affordability of crop insurance.

Now is the time to protect the one thing beginning farmers and their bankers can count on.

Joe Kessie is the senior vice president and commercial south regional manager at Lake City Bank in Warsaw, Indiana.

Weather anomalies have challenged farmers since the earliest days of agriculture. A flood, hail storm or drought can leave a farmer without a harvestable crop at the end of the season. In Central Kansas, producers have been fortunate in the fact that they have not had to endure multiple years of drought or poor production. However, neighboring areas such as Southwest Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and areas further west have not been so lucky. There is no doubt that crop insurance has helped some farmers stay in business through the tough times.

The United States has learned in hindsight that providing retroactive disaster relief is not only destabilizing for farmers but expensive for taxpayers. Prior to our current crop insurance system, it could have taken months if not years for farmers to receive relief payments following a disaster. While the support did not go unnoticed, there were many instances when the payments came too late to save a farmer from insolvency.

It is a fact that strong farm policy and support for crop insurance goes beyond the farmer, not only benefitting rural America but consumers as well. In the 2014 Farm Bill, crop insurance was recognized as the primary risk management tool for farmers, shifting a good share of the risks associated with farming away from the American taxpayer.

The key to a viable crop insurance system is the public-private partnership that makes it the success it has been. The private sector sells and services crop insurance policies and farmers pay premiums and have deductibles, just like other insurance policies. To incentivize farmers to buy crop insurance, the government partially discounts premiums to ensure that coverage is affordable, available to everyone, and economically viable.

Lenders also play a role in encouraging farmers to make informed decisions about managing their operating risk. At Central National Bank, we are agriculture lenders as well as licensed crop insurance agents. We encourage all of our farmer customers to protect their investment with crop insurance and as a financial institution, we may even be able to offer better loan terms to a producer that implements a solid risk management program.

It is important to keep in mind that crop insurance is a risk management tool, not a profit center. Some have charged that farmers would rather collect a crop insurance check than a good harvest.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Simple math suggests that “playing the crop insurance game” is not a sustainable business plan. In 10 years of working with producers, I’ve yet to meet anyone who would rather collect a crop insurance check than harvest a good crop.  

 As we enter into a period of declining margins, it will be important for producers to review all aspects of their operation, including risk management programs.  Recently, the farm economy has seen double-digit declines in net farm income as well as increases in the number of short-term operating loans. Having access to viable risk management tools will not necessarily add to the bottom line, but it is important for producers to utilize tools such as crop insurance to protect revenue streams through a possible prolonged downturn in the farm economy.

Not only does a well thought-out crop insurance plan speak to a producer’s management skills, but crop insurance also provides a backstop so producers are able to meet their financial obligations. Ensuring farmers have access to affordable, viable crop insurance options is not only critical for the farm business, but it will certainly impact future ag lending decisions in terms of assessing operating risk for loans.

Aaron Gasper is an agriculture and commercial lender at Central National Bank in Salina, Kansas.

As someone who has spent more than four decades managing a fourth-generation farm and the past 10 years building my family’s crop insurance agency, I believe I have valuable perspective worth sharing regarding how essential today’s federal crop insurance policies are to America’s farmers and consumers.

Specifically, I would like to explain how essential the Harvest Price Option has become to the modern agricultural producer.  The Harvest Price Option insures a crop at its actual harvest-time value. Think of it like a homeowner’s insurance policy. If your home appreciates in value after you purchase it, you are protected at the home’s current value if it burns down and you have to rebuild.

Unfortunately for agriculture, this policy that makes rebuilding possible has come under fire from those who misunderstand the unique risks for farmers who are constantly exposed to the ravages of Mother Nature. It is important to note that farmers pay an additional premium for this type of protection and it supports their risk management in two distinct ways.

First, a farmer often prices a large percentage of his anticipated – or before harvest – crop using forward price contracts with a local elevator. If a natural disaster strikes causing production to fall short of the quantity sold, the farmer would need to purchase enough of the crop to fulfill his contractual obligation. But, the price of the commodity is likely to have increased because of the overall drop in production due to the disaster. Consequently, the remaining crop available to purchase is priced much higher than what was covered under the spring contract.

By purchasing the Harvest Price Option as part of his crop insurance policy, the farmer is able to meet his contractual obligations either by buying grain to deliver under the contract or by making a financial settlement with the purchaser.

A second way the Harvest Price Option becomes essential to producers is if the grain being produced is intended to support the farm’s future animal feed needs. If a natural disaster destroys the grain that is to be harvested, then the producer will be forced to purchase feed instead.  If there is a widespread short crop, the feed costs will be much higher.  With the Harvest Price Option on the producer’s crop insurance policy, the farmer will be paid the actual harvest price on his lost production.  This, in turn, allows him to purchase the feed needs for his livestock operation and still maintain a viable business.

In fact, allowing farmers to maintain a viable business when the unexpected happens is what crop insurance is all about.  The beneficiary is not just the farmer, but also the American consumer. Crop insurance enables farm families like mine to pick up the pieces after a disaster and continue to produce food and fiber without significant price increases or supply shortages for consumers. The fact that Americans spend less of their disposable income for food than any other country speaks volume as to how critical it is that farmers have risk management tools like crop insurance.  The critics would do well to try to understand the link between a viable crop insurance program and an affordable, stable food supply before proposing measures that would destroy it. In other words, before biting the hand that feeds them.

Gary Riekhof is a farmer and crop insurance agent from Higginsville, Missouri.  This op-ed appeared in the Columbia Tribune on June 6, 2015.

“Frost threatens northern U.S. corn; rains soak southern Plains.”

This recent headline says it all. The diversity of American agricultural production coupled with the varied growing conditions across the country and the swings in weather explains why farmers need a safety net. More importantly, it describes why crop insurance is the centerpiece of the farm safety net.

U.S. multi-peril crop insurance is a risk management tool that farmers, regardless of their location, crop, or production method, purchase to protect against the loss of their crops due to natural disasters such as hail, drought, freezes, floods, fire, disease, or the loss of revenue due to a decline in price. Farmers buy policies to fit the individual needs of the their operations. In 2014, 1.2 million policies were sold protecting more than 120 different crops covering 294 million acres.

I have been farming corn and soybeans for about three decades and I have always purchased crop insurance because it gives me some peace of mind even though we are in a climate setting that typically doesn’t experience wide weather extremes like some of our neighbors in other parts of the country.

That’s not to say we haven’t been hit with our share of unpredictable weather that made planting and harvesting a crop challenging. It does mean I customize the policy I purchase to meet the needs of my operation.

For example, just two years ago, we had a hard time getting a crop in the ground because nine inches of snow blanketed the area on the second day of May, which is normally the time when we’re wrapping up the planting season. The soil was already soaked from a rainy spring season. That year we didn’t start planting until the middle of May and didn’t finish until the first week in June.

Late planting can potentially put a farmer in double jeopardy – not only are they expecting lower yields because of the delay in planting, but that crop is also vulnerable to frost around the autumn harvest time.

This was the first time in more than 20 years of farming that we planted corn in June – more than a third of our crop. It was also the first time we elected to take prevented planting provisions for roughly 5 percent of our acres as part of our crop insurance policy. Prevented planting provisions are designed to provide coverage when extreme weather conditions prevent a farmer from getting in the fields.

Crop insurance helped us cover some of the loss from that bad year. It made it manageable, which is why it’s an essential risk management tool for my farm and others like mine all across the country. The cost of growing crops has increased substantially. It wasn’t too long ago that it took about half of what it takes to grow an acre of corn. Because of these costs, a substantial crop loss would be a major financial setback for anyone. With crop insurance, we are able to level the highs and lows.

There have been a lot of changes to farm policy through the years to reflect the changing times, but given the diversity of agriculture in our country and the way crop insurance can be uniquely tailored to address disastrous conditions in an efficient and effective way, it should only be strengthened in the years to come.

Bruce Peterson is a farmer from Northfield and the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association. This op-ed appeared in The Hill on June 3, 2015.

When the 2014 Farm Bill became law, it marked a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. farm policy.   The new Farm Bill eliminated direct payments and reduced some of the price support policies of the past in favor of expanding crop insurance, which allows farmers to purchase varying levels of protection for their crops.

Gone are the days when farmers got a check every year regardless of weather or market conditions. Gone are the days when large-scale natural disasters would trigger wildly expensive disaster bills aimed at helping farmers get back on their feet.  From here forward, farmers who want risk protection will receive a bill, not a check, when they sign on the dotted line every year.

This is a good thing for several reasons.  First, crop insurance ensures farmers have a risk management plan in mind early in the year.  In addition to that plan, they must put their money towards purchasing a crop insurance policy.  This is no small amount of money for many farmers, who in 2014 spent roughly $3.8 billion on crop insurance premiums.

All told, those policies protected 295 million acres of farmland valued at $129 billion.  Today, 90 percent of planted cropland is protected by federal crop insurance, which protects more than125 different varieties of crops in all 50 states.

The evolution to crop insurance has effectively moved risk management away from the public sector, funded exclusively by taxpayer dollars, and toward the private sector, where farmers and crop insurance companies help shoulder part of the cost of natural disasters.   This is good for taxpayers because it takes them off the hook for the entire bill when disaster strikes, good for farmers who must always keep their risk management plan in mind, and good for rural America because farmers are the engines that generate economic activity.

Crop insurance has been around since 1938, but it wasn’t until Congress decided to make it affordable and ubiquitous that farmers really began to sign up.   And when disaster struck – as it does nearly every year somewhere here in the Northwest – farmers turned to their crop insurance policy and their insurance company, not their member of Congress, for help.

The demographics of farming can be rather scary, with the age of the average age of the nation’s 3.2 million farm operators at 58 years old and rising daily.   For young and beginning farmers, access to affordable and reliable crop insurance is honestly a make-or-break issue.  For those just entering farming, the costs are high and their ability to sustain a loss is very limited.  For them, purchasing a crop insurance policy not only protects their crops, but their careers paths as well.

Crop insurance is very popular here in the Northwest, with farmers and ranchers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho spending more than $96 million out of their own pockets last year to purchase the peace of mind offered by crop insurance.  Those policies protect the region’s apples, potatoes, sugar beets and a long list of other crops from the ravages of Mother Nature and volatile market swings.

In the old days, farmers largely relied on disaster assistance from the federal government in times of crisis.  According to the Congressional Research Service, some forty-two ad hoc disaster assistance bills cost taxpayers $70 billion since 1989.

With access to affordable, available and viable crop insurance policies, farmers have the backstop they need to bounce back when our rapidly changing climate throws them a curve ball.  That’s good for farmers, good for consumers who eat their produce, and good for the rural economy, which is largely supported by local farmers and ranchers.

Kent Wright is president of Northwest Farmers Union.  This op-ed appeared in the Tri-City Herald on May 30, 2015.

Crop insurance products were improved in the recent farm bill because Congress recognized that these products are a necessity for farmers, regardless of size. To me, a federally-supported crop insurance policy is defensible because a portion of the product’s cost is borne by the farmer.

I am one of those farmers. I raise cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat, peanuts and cattle in north Mississippi. Crop insurance is my most important risk management tool absent the direct payments that were available under previous farm law programs. Effective crop insurance products have allowed Congress to move away from providing ad hoc disaster assistance, thus reducing pressure on the federal budget.

We all have witnessed how farmers across the country have suffered from historic droughts, flooding, hail and other severe weather. Many cotton producers, in fact, have incurred particularly excessive yield losses the past three years from these weather events.

Without a doubt, the volatility of weather and commodity markets necessitates government assistance with crop insurance premiums so that our nation’s farmers have access to affordable and dependable crop insurance products.

Regarding cotton, the Stacked Income Protection Plan, known as STAX, is an insurance product that was included in the 2014 federal farm law and is available to upland cotton producers beginning with the 2015 crop year.

The U.S. cotton industry believes that STAX, like all other insurance products, should not be subjected to limits or eligibility restrictions. With cotton’s safety net now comprised solely by the marketing loan program and crop insurance, the U.S. cotton industry is especially concerned by any attempt to eliminate or place limits on key crop insurance tools.

Farm policy generally, and cotton policy specifically, was substantially reformed, funding reduced, and market orientation increased in the 2014 farm law, so now is not the time for further changes that will only undermine production agriculture’s risk management foundation.

The bottom line is that America’s farmers need an affordable and dependable insurance policy if they are going to continue producing safe, abundant, and affordable food and fiber – which is essential to our national security. Affordable and dependable crop insurance will provide the stability needed for U.S. cotton producers – and undergird an industry that provides employment for some 200,000 Americans and produces direct business revenue of more than $27 billion. Accounting for the ripple effect of cotton through the broader economy, direct and indirect employment surpasses 420,000 workers with economic activity well in excess of $100 billion.

Sledge Taylor is a farmer from Como, Miss., and chairman of the Memphis-based National Cotton Council of America.  This op-ed appeared in the Southeast Farm Press on May 21, 2015.

I started farming and ranching with my father and grandfather in southwest Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle 40 years ago, and I am the fourth generation to farm cotton, peanuts, wheat, corn, milo and cattle on our family’s land.

I was 17 when I started farming on my own, and although I have four decades of experience under my belt, the many issues we face today on the family farm — worked by me, my son, my brother-in-law and my son-in-law — are no less challenging than they were when I began. In most careers, things get easier as you move along. In farming, since the weather and prices are so unpredictable, it really never gets easier.

With few risk management tools available in the early days, it could take years to recover from a hailstorm, an early freeze or any of the many other natural perils that could be thrown at you. When I first learned of crop insurance, I didn’t purchase it because premiums were unaffordable and margins were too slim to afford it. Thankfully, Congress made crop insurance more available and affordable — by partially discounting the premium — and now I wouldn’t farm without it.

Since the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill, crop insurance is the best tool farmers have to manage risks and revenue. It’s not cheap, but it is something that we budget for annually and can’t imagine not having.

The key to crop insurance’s success has been its affordability, its availability and its viability. Last year, farmers spent nearly $4 billion on crop insurance policies that protected 90 percent of planted cropland in the United States. I’d bet that many of the farmers in our area wouldn’t be surviving the current drought — which started in 2011 — if it wasn’t for crop insurance.

Despite the fact that agriculture’s safety net programs took a huge cut in the last farm bill, some in Congress seem to think we need to give more. I wonder if some of those people have any idea where their food and clothes come from or what it takes to get it from the farm to their plate or closet.

It seems almost daily that someone in Congress is proposing a bill to cut the premium support on crop insurance. It would not serve anyone to cut these risk management tools to farmers, as they allow farmers to concentrate on producing higher-yielding, better-quality crops that reduce the costs to the consumer.

Crop insurance is not a gift but insurance, just like homeowner’s insurance, that farmers buy. And like homeowner’s insurance, we don’t collect a dime without a verifiable loss and paying a deductible. Without crop insurance, many farmers couldn’t get financed and it would be almost impossible for a beginning farmer to get started.

Crop insurance is critical in meeting these challenges, and guarantees the American consumer a safe, affordable supply of quality food and fiber that is unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

Kelly Horton lives in Hollis.

Some stereotypes about U.S. farm policy just won’t die.

For example, the belief that farmers get paid for not growing; or that benefits just go to big agribusinesses; or that farm spending is out of control.

Such criticisms make splashy headlines but are no longer relevant thanks to the significant evolution of farm policy over the past 20 years. Over that time, government control of agriculture has given way to a system where farmers take more responsibility, make decisions based on market forces, and are asked to help fund their own safety net.

The most significant reforms occurred in the 2014 farm bill, which is projected to reduce farm spending by billions over the next decade.

The farm bill repealed direct payments – checks that some farmers received every year no matter the market conditions or how crops fared. In their place are crop insurance policies made available to all growers regardless of size, geographic location or cropping decision.

With crop insurance, most farmers get bills in the mail instead of government checks, and because producers are now paying more of the farm policy tab, spending has trended downward over the years (to less than three-tenths of 1 percent of the federal budget).Here’s how it plays out on my sugar beet, soybeans and wheat farm.

Living through the drought of 2012 as an Illinois farmer gave me a whole new appreciation for risk management tools. There are things that farmers can do to try and deal with the curveballs served up by Mother Nature and with the ups and downs of market swings, but many things — like a massive drought or a heat wave — are completely out of our control.

If this drought would have happened a decade before, it would have left many farmers completely devastated and on the verge of bankruptcy, with nowhere to turn but to Congress for an expensive, taxpayer-funded bailout package. In fact, past disasters have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars since 1979.

What was different about the drought of 2012, which was the worst natural disaster to hit this state in my lifetime, is that the vast majority of the state’s farmers had purchased the best risk-management tool around: crop insurance. In fact, farmers spent well over $4 billion out of their own back pockets in 2012 purchasing the protection and peace of mind of crop insurance, which meant when disaster struck, they had a backup plan in hand.

The recent Farm Bill took three long years to pass and cut $23 billion out of farm programs. But for those who for whatever reason are always looking to criticize farm policy that still wasn’t enough. Now they have their sights set again on crop insurance, and are pushing forth ideas to make it more expensive for farmers to purchase.

What these misguided groups and members of Congress seem to miss is that the reason why crop insurance has become the best risk-management tool for farmers is that it’s affordable and reliable. In fact, 90 percent of planted cropland was protected by crop insurance in 2014. It’s this level of protection — made possible by crop insurance’s affordability — that keeps expensive disaster bills from hitting taxpayers when Mother Nature strikes.

Unlike direct payments in the past, crop insurance is not a handout. In fact, when farmers purchase crop insurance, they receive a bill, not a check, and only receive a payment if they incur a loss, and only after paying a deductible. Just like homeowners’ insurance, when farmers buy crop insurance, they do so hoping that they will never have to use it. And many of them rarely do. In fact, since 2000, farmers have paid out more than $38 billion purchasing the protection of crop insurance, and in most years, they don’t collect a dime.

If crop insurance becomes more costly, then farmers simply won’t be able to afford it, and they will have nowhere to turn but the federal government when disaster strikes. This is a lesson we learned over and over again before crop insurance became widely available and affordable.

Crop insurance works so well and has been embraced so readily by farmers across the country because it’s a public private partnership that combines the best of the public and private sectors. Crop insurance premiums are partially discounted by the government to ensure affordability and the policies are sold and serviced by the private sector. And when disaster strikes, an indemnity check arrives in weeks, not years.

Like any other public policy, crop insurance isn’t perfect, and I’m sure Congress will do some fine-tuning to the program in the next Farm Bill just like they did in this one. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that farmers are not only enormous producers, they are enormous consumers as well. And with crop insurance policies in hand, they can bounce back from natural disaster or huge market fluctuations and continue to be the engines that drive the economy of rural America.

Keith Mussman is president of the Kankakee County Farm Bureau.

It was 2010 and I was expecting to harvest my best crop. I had done everything right and the weather had been kind. Or so I thought. Then on a late October night, it hailed for six hours and what was anticipated to be my best crop year turned into nothing. But the worst of it was yet to come. It stopped raining. It stopped for 336 days straight. It kicked off what would be the worst drought since the 1950s. The conditions would improve slightly, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that for the last five years, my part of the world – West Texas – has essentially been on fire.

Mother Nature is the toughest, most unpredictable boss. Farmers are resilient and they adapt, but a safety net is crucial to their survival. And, it’s not a safety net if it’s not affordable.

That’s what today’s crop insurance offers farmers. A safety net that is both affordable and widely available.  It’s what’s helped me make it to the next year.

That hasn’t always been the case. When crop insurance got its start in the 1930s, it was a poorly run government program. It hobbled along through the 60s and 70s, but the premiums were too high so the participation was low with limited available coverage. Farmers mainly relied on costly ad hoc disaster assistance when natural disasters wiped out their crops. It was so ineffective that the Secretary of Agriculture, Bob Bergland, told Congress in 1977 that disaster programs “are for the most part…a disaster.” This gave birth to the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 that created a successful public-private partnership that remains today.  Since then there have been other pieces of legislation along the way that have made additional improvements to the delivery and mechanics of crop insurance with the most recent being the 2014 Farm Bill.

Sadly, there are some who don’t know or understand the history and improvements that have taken place to make crop insurance what it is today. Meanwhile, there are others who are bent on attacking farm policy regardless.

I was reminded of this on a recent visit to Washington, D.C. where I met with lawmakers and staff on behalf of producers across the country. Each time I visit I am struck by how important outreach is to ensure agriculture remains successful in this country and that crop insurance remains a viable, affordable, and widely available safety net for farmers and ranchers.

I tend to walk away both encouraged and discouraged by my visits. I am encouraged because there are some who understand the challenges that we face; and discouraged because there is always more to be done. The battle never ends and we need more voices in support of American agriculture.

Our form of government requires participation.  When we don’t show up and tell our story, without a doubt, someone who doesn’t understand or care about production agriculture and the importance of crop insurance will fill the void.

We all sit on the tractor or the combine and talk to ourselves about how to make things better, but sometimes you have to get off the tractor and find your voice. We can’t assume policymakers understand the anxiety we feel when we’re days away from harvesting a good crop and it’s destroyed in matter of minutes by something beyond our control. We can’t assume policymakers know the one thing that enables us to start again is crop insurance. It’s up to us to tell them.

Wade Cowan is the president of the American Soybean Association. He farms soybeans, guar, cotton, wheat, and grain sorghum in West Texas.

Pop quiz: Next to tourism, what Florida industry is the state’s largest employer?

The answer isn’t health care, transportation, technology or even government. Agriculture is Florida’s second-biggest job supplier, according to the University of Florida.

“Two million jobs can be traced to the state’s agriculture, natural resources and related food industries — and not just on our 47,500 farms. Income from $142 billion in annual sales gets spent around the state to create jobs in restaurants, department stores and car dealerships, too,” Jack Payne of the University’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences said during a recent media interview.

Despite their importance, farmers and all they support are at the mercy of a multitude of uncontrollable forces.

A year of hard work and investment can be wiped out in an instant by a late-season hurricane, an early frost or an unexpected outbreak of insects or plant disease.

And the ever-looming prospect of a changing climate could be “potentially catastrophic,” according to Payne, as it wreaks havoc on water supplies, soil conditions and land use.

So how do farmers gain some control over the uncontrollable and add stability to the region’s economy?

Crop insurance is key.

Read more here.