Crop Insurance Revised

How many of you are impacted by crop insurance? I think it affects us all as it subsidized by our Federal Government but really only impacts my farmer readers directly. Thursday is the last day to sign up for the product.

I never used crop insurance until we bought our first farm large enough to need to address our risk of putting out larger acreages of crops. That was 2004 and some of those fields have produced 11 crops in 8 years through my double cropping practice.

There are several different products available, GRIP, GRP or commonly called group and CRC which is also a revenue product today. This one is most common in crop producing areas.

Basically, I need a history of 4 corn crops on a piece of ground to get full benefit of the product I select to insure it. I have that on some, not on all. I can buy $900 worth of income protection for $38 on my longest history ground and only $600 for $24 on my short history farms. It adds up to thousands and dollars of insurance but tens of thousands of income protection.

The meeting between my young banker and agent went well. After an hour and a half of discussion, my brain wandered off thinking, these guys are having old home day and I only wanted us to agree on my risk! I guess we accomplished our mission.

Today I am trying to figure out how to best get my nitrogen in place for that corn crop while getting the ground in shape for production. There is always some land shaping to do, even in "no-till."

My friends are emailing each other about red meat consumption in the news and pink slime while the front page of the paper is about surplus salt sitting in all the county warehouses from the record warm winter.

Weather is the news today as we will approach the record high of 79 degrees and farmers are itching to get in the fields. One farmer in Indiana is planting soybeans today.

"The next few weeks weather forecast has farmers shining up their planters and looking to the fields. Just a reminder, see below for the earliest planting dates for corn and soybeans in your area.

Corn and Soybeans planted before the earliest planting date will still be insurable, but our underwriters cannot authorize a replant payment on acreage initially planted before that date. Acreage planted before the earliest planting date must be replanted if authorized by an adjuster, in accordance with the RMA Loss Adjustment Manual, to remain insurable. Acreage that is replanted after the earliest plant date may be eligible for a replant payment on the second replant.

Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, & Illinois
Corn Early planting date - April 5th
Soybean Early planting date - April 20th

Missouri & Iowa
Corn Early planting date - March 25th
Soybean Early planting date - April 15th

Ed