Although Tim Totheroh says that his last name is \u201cPennsylvania Dutch,\u201d he\u2019s 100 percent Illinois farm boy, having spent his entire life on a farm near Wellington, Illinois.<\/p>\n
Totheroh, who farms 850 acres of corn and soybeans, is also a crop insurance adjuster, which gave him unique insight into the historic drought of 2012. Totheroh says that in all of his years of farming, he\u2019s never seen anything quite like last summer. \u201cI entered a corn field and walked half a mile, turned and walked a half a mile in the other direction,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t see a single ear of corn. Not one single ear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Totheroh said that sometimes he\u2019d walk through a field and happen upon a small portion of corn that fared a little better. \u201cEvery here and there, you\u2019d find a part of the field that got lucky and had a shower or two more than the rest, and you\u2019d have 180 bushels in that one little spot. But then the rest of the field was just awful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Totheroh said that thankfully, not all farmers suffered such extreme losses. \u201cSome of the new hybrid varieties helped farmers a bit because the plants were more efficient at using what little moisture fell,\u201d he said. But for most farmers, who are accustomed to getting about 180 bushels of corn per acre, the losses were substantial. \u201cLast year, I walked a lot of fields that had 80 to 100 bushels per acre,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just had half a corn crop around here, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n
Totheroh noted that losses of that magnitude are hard to handle, particularly for the younger and new farmers, who are just getting started and are thus more vulnerable. \u201cThere aren\u2019t a lot of new farmers, unfortunately, but the ones who were coming into the business last year were shocked by how bad it was,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if they had spent their whole lives growing up on a farm, they had never experienced anything like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, most of those young farmers had purchased crop insurance, which allowed them to put their worries on the back burner a little and focus on what they could do to make the most of the hand they had been dealt,\u201d he said. Totheroh noted that while crop insurance premiums are not cheap, it is often money well spent. \u201cMost farmers around here purchase crop insurance, and most rarely collect on their policies,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Totheroh explained that while Illinois generally has consistently good corn crops, there is an area not far from his farm that has had three really bad years in a row. \u201cWithout crop insurance, those guys would be out of business,\u201d he said. And that is due to no fault of their own, just three bad years where Mother Nature had thrown them a curve ball,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Totheroh noted that this year, despite a cold wet start, the corn crop looks much better and farmers are feeling far more optimistic, with some forecasts predicting the largest corn crop in U.S. history. \u201cThe young farmers are very upbeat too,\u201d he noted. \u201cThey weathered a bad year, saw how well their insurance worked, and they know that if they purchase crop insurance, they have a backstop if the floor drops out from under them,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to necessarily lose everything just because of a bad year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although Tim Totheroh says that his last name is \u201cPennsylvania Dutch,\u201d he\u2019s 100 percent Illinois farm boy, having spent his entire life on a farm near Wellington, Illinois. Totheroh, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":4967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farmers","category-whats-cropping-up"],"yoast_head":"\n