Contact: Laurie Langstraat, 913-685-2767<\/b><\/p>\n
The following statement should be attributed to Tom Zacharias, president, National Crop Insurance Services and is in response to the Bloomberg News story \u201cTaxpayers turn U.S. farmers into fat cats with subsidies\u201d:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe primary reason behind the growth and success of crop insurance over the last decade is that farmers, farm groups, banks and other lenders, elected officials and those who live and work in rural America understand that it is the best, most cost-effective risk management tool farmers have.\u00a0\u00a0 That is why the lack of balance and clear agenda behind the first in this series of articles is so troubling.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, the article claims that the government \u201cpays farmers to buy coverage,\u201d which is absolutely false.\u00a0 Farmers purchase crop insurance policies with money out of their own pockets.\u00a0 If a loss does not occur, which is the case for most farmers in most years, then purchasing crop insurance is a net loss, not a gain, for farmers.<\/p>\n \u201cIn truth, crop insurance is a win-win scenario for all stakeholders in agriculture and the public in general.\u00a0 For farmers and the rural economies they support, it is a critical risk management tool that helps farmers who purchase policies recover from natural disasters.\u00a0\u00a0 For financial institutions, a crop insurance policy serves as collateral for a farmer\u2019s production loan that might otherwise not be feasible.\u00a0 For taxpayers, crop insurance has all but eliminated large-scale emergency <\/i>disaster bills, which fell fully on their laps every time and cost more than $70 billion since 1989.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be noted that overall farm safety net spending has fallen dramatically since the rise of crop insurance. Unfortunately, this series is providing a platform to the critics of crop insurance, who for various reasons want to implode any farm safety net and return America to the past days of costly, cumbersome agriculture disaster bills and financial disruption for America\u2019s farmers.<\/p>\n \u201cCrop insurance is a modern-day farm policy for today’s unique weather and market challenges and it, and the farmers who raise our feed, food and fuel, deserve praise, not condemnation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0###<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contact: Laurie Langstraat, 913-685-2767 The following statement should be attributed to Tom Zacharias, president, National Crop Insurance Services and is in response to the Bloomberg News story \u201cTaxpayers turn U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncis-responds","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n