Last week Governor Jerry Brown declared California is in a drought. A drought simply stated is a shortage of precipitation, whether it comes from rain or snow. There just simply isn’t any moisture in our lands. Problems that can stem from a drought can become catastrophic. Withered crops, high fire dangers, water shortages and livestock dying are just a few of the effects that a drought has on our land. Unemployment is another effect that a drought will bring. The loss of crops means no employment. In 2009, about 10,000 people lost their job due to the drought.
According to Brown, who was in San Francisco last week, “The drought accentuates and further displays the conflicts between north and south and between urban and rural parts of the state. So, as governor, I’ll be doing my part to bring people together and working through this.”
During this dry season, the rest of us need to be diligent as well. Conserve as much water as we can, including washing dishes all at once, don’t light fires when you’re camping and use only propane stoves. Right now, California is in danger of becoming a matchbox just waiting for the match to strike.
According to 58 year old Kevin Kester, “I am a fifth-generation cattle rancher, and it has never been this bad ever in my lifetime — and from my family’s history, it’s never been anywhere close to this bad ever.” The last drought that was comparable to the one we’re in now, according to his family’s history was in the 1890’s.
Contact us today for a quote for your agribusiness.
On Monday, December 30, 2014 in a small farming community just outside of Salinas, an unusual discovery was made. A crop circle appeared on a small farm in Chualar.
Take a look:
Debra Flanager, who is a braille transcriber from New Jersey said that the dots that were placed in the middle of the circle translate to:
The new U.S. farm bill is already a year behind schedule so what’s one more month? Negotiators said that the work for the legislation to cut food stamps for the poor and expand crop insurance for farmers won’t be completed prior to Congress adjourning for the year. This farm bill will cover topics from farm exports and food aid to crop subsidies.
The delay is nothing new for the farm bill. Since mid-2012 Congress has asked for massive cuts in the food stamp program. The House is asking for the largest amount of cut with a $40 billion cut over the course of the next ten years. The Senate is a little more liberal with a recommended cut of $4.5 billion.
According to Insurance Journal,
“We will be ready to vote in January,” Debbie Stabenow, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, told reporters.”
Many components of the farm bill are up in the air, including food stamps.
The Proposal
The new farm bill would spend some $500 billion over five years, three-quarters of it on food stamps.
Specifically, the Insurance Journal reports,
“Both chambers would trim spending on traditional farm subsidies, conservation programs and food stamps, while expanding outlays for crop insurance by up to 10 percent. One crop insurance proposal would assure grain and soybean growers of up to 90 percent of average revenue from a crop.”
Scurich Insurance Services know that there is so many different types of insurance needs that everyone has. Commercial insurance needs are different than personal insurance needs and of course specialties. We also know that running around to different agencies for different needs is inconvenient, that’s why we have such a large array of services that we can provide you with. Look below and see just a few of the insurance needs we can accommodate:
Commercial Insurance
Commercial packages
Business auto
Workers Compensation
Umbrella
Directors & Officers
Professional liability
Employee practices liability
Personal Insurance
Auto
Home
Umbrella
Recreational vehicle
Watercraft
Life & health
Individual medical
Individual life
Group Medical
Group benefits
At Scurich Insurance Services in Watsonville, we cater to the agriculture business at every level of production and service. If you run one machine or a hundred, we will be committed to being your premiere insurance agency. Our purpose is to provide the best value and service available, while maintaining the highest ethical standards with our clients, carriers, and the public. Some of our agricultural lines include:
Agribusiness
Hog Confinement
Grain Elevators
Feed Mills
Livestock Feed Lots
Custom Harvesting
Even if your business isn’t agriculture based, we can still help you with your commercial insurance needs. Contact us online, or give us a call at 1-800-320-3666.
Original content provided by Transformer Marketing
Critics of the U.S. crop insurance program called for cuts to it and other agribusiness subsidies as Congress revamps farm policy.
At a rally on Capitol Hill, Wisconsin Representatives Tom Petri, a Republican, and Ron Kind, a Democrat, called for lawmakers to re-examine U.S. farm spending for the next five years and revamp the nation’s crop insurance program.
“We’re asking these crop insurance companies to put a little bit of their skin in the game too, so it’s not all on the taxpayer back,” Kind told reporters at the event.
Under the insurance program, the U.S. taxpayer subsidizes the majority of premiums paid by farmers, covers much of the administrative costs tallied by insurers to run the program, and guarantees that all losses are covered, according to a series of articles published by Bloomberg News this week.
Crop insurance covered $117 billion worth of product in 2012, including almost all the corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat produced in the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent about $14 billion last year on the program as the worst drought in a half century devastated plantings.
Supporters of crop insurance are stepping up their lobbying to preserve the program’s funding levels.
‘Political Process’
Richard Gibson, founder of American Agrisurance Inc. and a business consultant, told agents of NAU Country Insurance Co. in an e-mail this week obtained by Bloomberg News to lobby their lawmakers. He said crop insurance had become a target as Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a 2014 budget or a stopgap measure to keep the federal government operating.
“I’ve been around this business since it started, and the bottom line to it is, it’s been a political process since day one,” Gibson said in a phone interview yesterday.
At today’s rally, Kind said the existing crop insurance program guarantees companies a 14 percent profit, forces the adoption of little risk and covers administrative and operating expenses.
“There’s not a business in the world that wouldn’t sign up for that offer, so why are we doing that in crop insurance program of the farm bill?” he said.
Last week Governor Jerry Brown declared California is in a drought. A drought simply stated is a shortage of precipitation, whether it comes from rain or snow. There just simply isn’t any moisture in our lands. Problems that can stem from a drought can become catastrophic. Withered crops, high fire dangers, water shortages and livestock dying are just a few of the effects that a drought has on our land. Unemployment is another effect that a drought will bring. The loss of crops means no employment. In 2009, about 10,000 people lost their job due to the drought.