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10 years ago · by · 0 comments

The Importance of Crop Insurance

Scurich Insurance Services, CA, DroughtAs with any business, agricultural producers face risks of all kinds. However, the two most important risks facing farmers are yield and price. Fortunately, producers can buy insurance that reduces their exposure to low yields or low prices. Unavoidable risks protected by crop insurance include:

* Heat
* Hail
* Drought
* Frost
* Freeze
* Pests
* Excess Moisture

Since the 1930s, crop insurance has been available to agricultural producers in the United States. However, it was in the 1990s that the United States government promoted crop insurance by offering new products and more insurance premium subsidies.

The Risk Management Agency (RMA), is part of the United States Department of Agriculture is the governing authority for the crop insurance program and is in charge of the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC). Private insurance companies contract with RMA to service crop insurance sold through independent insurance agencies. As with other disaster insurance programs, such as the National Flood Insurance Program, the private sector sells crop insurance, as the private sector is more efficient and rapidly adjudicates claims.
Crop insurance is unique in that companies selling Federal Crop insurance have a mandate to sell to any farmer, even those who are at high risk, at the same premium set in advance by the Federal government. Even farmers in high-risk drought areas such as California get policies without special underwriting standards or higher premium rates.

Without crop insurance, agricultural producers would have difficulty in achieving financial stability, a more difficult time in getting and repaying loans. Crop insurance allows agricultural producers to help forward marketing.

Essential facts about United States Crop Insurance

* Farmers share in the cost of the program
* Agricultural producers are personally responsible for managing risk
* Under the program, the producer gets tailored risk management solutions
* Quick indemnity pay outs
* The crop insurance program is dynamic; it can quickly adjust and self-correct
* Payments to producers never exceed actual insured losses
* Insurance is allowable collateral for loans
* Growers have no payment limits that cut protection from losses
* Insured growers have the benefit of private sector efficiency
* The program has the flexibility to meet World Trade Organization support limits

The United States crop insurance program provides so much more than just protection from risk. It plays a vital role in keeping the agriculture industry functioning.

Contact our office to make sure you are completely covered.

Content provided by Transformer Marketing.

Sources: http://www2.ca.uky.edu/cmspubsclass/files/cgwalters/Understanding%20Crop%20Insurance.pdf, http://www2.ca.uky.edu/cmspubsclass/files/cgwalters/Understanding%20Crop%20Insurance.pdf, http://www.cropinsuranceinamerica.org/just-the-facts/is-crop-insurance-like-other-forms-of-insurance/, https://www.cropinsurers.com/images/pdf/focus-on-congress/Importance_of_Crop_Insurance_in_the_US.pdf

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10 years ago · by · 0 comments

Crop Insurance Critics Make Push to Curb U.S. Subsidies

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.

Read more here.

Scurich Insurance Services, Watsonville, California

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

Let Scurich Insurance Services know if you are a Happy Customer!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office:
1-831-722-3541
Toll Free:
1-800-320-3666
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Information provided by:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-12/crop-insurance-backers-step-up-lobbying-to-blunt-critics.html

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11 years ago · by · 0 comments

Crop Insurance Critics, Defenders in Last Push Over Reforms

A bipartisan group of lawmakers planned to meet yesterday in Washington to re-examine U.S. farm spending for the next five years. Wisconsin Representatives Tom Petri, a Republican, and Ron Kind, a Democrat, planned to use a Capitol Hill rally to call for an “end to handouts,” Petri’s office said in a statement.

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.

Richard Gibson, founder of American Agrisurance Inc. and a business consultant, told agents of NAU Country Insurance Co. in an e-mail this week 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 spending measure to keep the 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.

‘Circle the Wagons’

Kind, the Wisconsin Democrat, said he isn’t surprised by the lobbying push. “It’s a very powerful, well-organized lobby out here to try to circle the wagons,” he said in a phone interview.

Petri and Kind co-sponsored legislation in May to cap the total value of crop insurance subsidies to $40,000 per individual annually, and eliminate support for those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $250,000. That measure, which the lawmakers said would save $11 billion over a decade, failed in the House.

“What we’re recommending is not unreasonable,” he said. “This is an area that we can reform” to find cost-savings in the farm legislation.

‘Fiscal Responsibility’

In e-mails to agents, Gibson criticized Bloomberg News stories that examined the program’s costs and vulnerability to fraud. Crop insurers and the USDA said subsidized insurance helps stabilize food prices and protects farmers from the vagaries of weather.

“The program is working, so why does Bloomberg put on the negative ad campaign to destroy it?” Gibson said. He told agents in a Sept. 9 e-mail “to stay engaged with our political representatives” and warned that detractors of the program “will be out in force when and if the farm bill ever reached the conference level.”

Adjustments to the farm bill are still possible as both houses of Congress reconcile separate measures in a conference to shape the final law.

New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who also proposed curtailing payments, said re-examining the program was a “smart way” to reduce the deficit.

“Limiting federal spending on crop insurance is a common- sense fix to some of the government’s most egregious spending and waste,” she said in a statement.

Petition Delivery

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which is organizing today’s event, plans to deliver tens of thousands of petitions urging members of Congress to overhaul the program.

“We’re using taxpayer money to pay big companies to buy insurance that they would buy themselves,” Dan Smith, tax and budget advocate for Washington-based U.S. PIRG, said in a phone interview.

President Barack Obama sought this year to cut almost $12 billion from the program in the next decade while Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has called subsidized insurance “crony capitalism” that needs to be reduced in an effort to curtail federal spending.

Tom Zacharias, president of National Crop Insurance Services, the main lobby for crop insurers, defended spending levels in a statement that said the Bloomberg series showed an “obvious bias” against the program.

Crop insurance “forces farmers to manage risk before, not after it happens, which saves taxpayers money,” Zacharias said.

Gibson said he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press on behalf of NAU Country, a unit of QBE Insurance Group Ltd. of Sydney, Australia and was expressing his own views.

The House legislation is H.R. 2642; Senate is S.954.

Scurich Insurance Services, Crop Insurance Last Push for Reform, Watsonville, Ca

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666

Information provided by:  http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2013/09/12/304927.htm

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Scurich Insurance Services
Phone: (831) 661-5697
Fax: (831) 661-5741

Physical:
783 Rio Del Mar Blvd., Suite7,
Aptos, Ca 95003-4700

Mailing:
PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170

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