As Illinois farmers, our biggest concerns regarding the whims of Mother Nature are late spring freezes, heavy spring rains that delay planting, wind, hail, and possibly flood damage.<\/p>\n
But this year, we\u2019re in a whole other ballgame. We live in a part of the state that is affectionately known as \u201cLittle Egypt,\u201d which could be quite appropriate given the fact that our climate seems more like the Sahara Dessert than the Midwest.<\/p>\n
The entire state finds itself in a drought, with all but five counties in a state of \u201csevere, extreme or exceptional\u201d drought. To put that in perspective, a good part of our state is a foot or more below average on rainfall this year. And about 66 percent of our entire corn crop is currently in poor or very poor condition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s times like these that farmers who purchase crop insurance will be able to sleep at night. That\u2019s because crop insurance was designed by Congress for years like this, as a tool to move some of the risk of America\u2019s farm sector from the taxpayers to the private sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Illinois farmers, our biggest concerns regarding the whims of Mother Nature are late spring freezes, heavy spring rains that delay planting, wind, hail, and possibly flood damage. But this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\n