WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — As the drought continues to ravage the nation’s corn, wheat and soybean fields, crop insurance losses are expected to break records.<\/p>\n
With nearly half of the continental United States under severe drought conditions, crop insurance losses are mounting daily, according to a report from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln released on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It will be a major loss situation,” said Thomas Zacharias, president of the National Crop Insurance Services, a lobbying group representing private crop insurers. “The companies are in the field adjusting claims as we speak.”<\/p>\n
An economist with the group roughly estimated that\u00a0<\/strong>losses could top $20 billion.<\/p>\n And taxpayers will ultimately shoulder most of the cost the nation’s scorched fields.<\/p>\n While there are no official estimates available yet, National Crop Insurance Services Economist Keith Collins said crop losses this year look as bad or worse than other terrible drought years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — As the drought continues to ravage the nation’s corn, wheat and soybean fields, crop insurance losses are expected to break records. With nearly half of the continental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,20],"tags":[43,51,53],"class_list":["post-2984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-news-headlines","tag-drought","tag-safety-net-2","tag-weather-2"],"yoast_head":"\n