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The Insurance Game

Commodity insurance has been around pretty much as long as most people have been farming. Row crops can be insured cheaply and easily through federal government programs. It became so lucrative that people started gaming the system by not planting, planting too deep, etc in order to not have a crop and just get the insurance. This has gotten better now. There are proposals to revamp how crop insurance and direct payments such as price support work. My hope is that livestock are able to get a real disaster insurance product that is subsidized so that it is affordable. I don't know about you folks but I have been wiped out three times and I am not talking about a lamb crop. I mean a set of ewes or nannies gone or dead with no recourse to rebuild. Once due to packs of dogs, once to a late spring freeze that killed most all my goats, and once to theft. Then as we have all experienced a bad or nonexistent lamb crop. Predators are usually to blame but there are many situations such as disease or weather as well. You know the scenario. You work hard to get a set of ewes bred and in good shape, keep the fences up and look for predator sign and then the lambs come and wham! Coyotes or other predators show up and take your crop from you. What to do. This is when I wish I was a corn farmer! I don't look to the government for anything but factually they own the predators so under the law they should pay for the damage they do. Seems fair and certainly not a handout!