[AT] Crop insurance and disasters analyzed in California

[Grant Brians]

Ralph, you are right about crop/hail insurance not being a factor here. The
manner in which American hail insurance is structured is designed to match
the needs of the large grain / soybean or single crop fruit grower. By this
I mean that the damage payout is set by reaching a damage percentage
threshold for the total production of that crop in either a property or
operation basis. This works well for those crops because they are
planted/harvested one time per season and you can easily see the percentage
of loss either visually or in the harvest amount after harvest.
     In the case of the vegetable industry here except for Mechanical
Harvest cannery tomatoes and Freezer Peppers, the typical operation harvests
a given crop multiple times throughout the season, has multiple plantings of
the same crop and does not sustain the damage threshold from one or even
multiple plantings losses being 100%. A few years ago we had an
extraordinary winter freeze. I lost 85% of my winter Turnip, winter Radish,
Kohlrabi and other crops in addition to lower percentages of many other
greens and other crops. All told a very big loss for me at the time (or
today for that matter!) The County Agricultural Commissioner encouraged me
to apply for disaster assistance as none of these crops have a prepaid crop
insurance program to use. I filled out the paperwork and he determined that
because I grow a Fall and Summer Turnip program, year round for radishes,
and various combinations of year round and seasons for the other items that
not a single crop qualified even with 85-100% crop loss!!!
     For reasons like these, California has a very low percentage of
participation (9% claimed by EWG analysis, although I looked at the data for
my county and found an amazing amount of skewed and inaccurate data as far
as active operations) in agricultural programs even though we produce 12.3%
of farm sales in the nation. Interestingly, because virtually no vegetable
crops are covered by crop insurance here (coastal California), the only
assistance we might get is through disaster programs. In analyzing the
payment data for our county, I found that the amounts claimed as paid in
both crop and disaster payments did not go to vegetable production
operations and even where mixed operations received funds, the money did not
go to the vegetable production portion. Also, nearly all of the actual crop
subsidies in our county went to people who NO LONGER PRODUCE Cotton and
Grain actively! Granted these amounts are declining over time, but still
that just seems completely wrong!
     The only crops that routinely carry crop insurance here in our county
are Cherries and Wheat....
          Grant Brians
          Hollister,California farmer of Vegetables, Nuts and Fruit (no
cherries...)

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com]On Behalf Of Ralph Goff
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 11:33 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Now NC twisters: was Mina problem


On 4/19/2011 5:24 PM, Grant Brians wrote:
> On April 7th we had a freak Thunderstorm here in the Santa Clara Valley of
> California. Normally we rarely get thunderstorms and we only get hail once
> in a while. During that day, at two of the ranches I farm about half a
mile
> apart (but not at the other two ranches, one of which was less than three
> miles away as the crow flies) we received 5 separate periods of hail. In
> total about an inch of hail fell as part of the total 1.2" of
precipitation
> during the 5 hour time period.
>
That is bad news. I'm guessing nobody carries crop/hail insurance there?
It is part of my yearly expenses here paying hail insurance premiums.
Hail seems to have its favorite areas to pass through from what we have
seen historically here. I'm lucky to be in an area where it does not
often cause crop damage although there have been some memorable
exceptions. On our crops we can get bad hail with high percentage damage
payout and if it is early enough in the year, the crop can still recover
and produce a fair yield. Often it is too late and frost will hit it
before maturity.

Ralph in Sask.

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