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| Yes I am a little down on crop insurance, at least for most situations in our area. I think they are behind the curve. Yes, I realize there are a lot of people who just farm for the insurance, I think we can both list more than a handful we know in our own area. Some are doing it intentionally, some are just bad farmers. There was way too much wheat the past two years that received a 0 or 1bu adjustment that should have been cut. I have seen several fields that I know would have made over 40bu/A. We had a farm this year that got a very low adjustment. we went ahead and cut it because it was foundation seed, made 45bu/A after all the rain. We cut the majority of our wheat this year, all the way into August, and came out ahead of most people with RA policies. Did we have corp insurance on our wheat, yes. And we will continue to carry a low level because it appears that is going to be a requirement to qualify for disaster programs. The set price level for an APH policy ended up being about $2 below market price for wheat and $1 below market price for corn this past year.
Even with the drought of 06 in Grant county we only collected insurance on 80A of corn. Maybe we were just lucky. RA didn't help many guys with their corn freezing this year because most had it planted before the March 15 plant date which voided their replant provision. Sure some lied about their plant date, but that isn't right either. By the time we figured the replant provisions offered by the seed companies we had less money invested in the second crop than they did, although they still had coverage on the second crop if they chose to replant. Some of those who chose not to replant because they had received a nice payment, sure wished they had when harvest began in August. For us, planting 2A of corn on each separate unit we farm to prove yield isn't feasible. I can't imagine the mess we would have at the FA office if we tried to do that, not to mention the hassle of farming it separate all year.
I will give you the fact that subsoil moisture plays a much bigger role in raising corn, in Grant County, than sorghum here. We have some double crop corn in Grant county that didn't receive a single drop of moisture from the day we planted it to the day final yield was determined. Still made 50bu. But that was on much deeper soils than what I was referring to earlier and corn has a much deeper rooting depth than sorghum. Corn seems to do a much better job of utilizing moisture early in the season and tolerating drought and heat late in the season than sorghum. That's one of the reasons we have transitioned from sorghum to corn.
No golden parachute here, and I realize it's a valuable tool in many situations. We still use it. But after many hours spent analyzing a lot of data, it appears that it is becoming a less and less valuable tool for us. Diversification over a large geographical area and across a wide array of crops and livestock appears to be a more profitable alternative for us. A lot of the land we are raising corn on is new land that we are farming, raising corn because it has way too many weed problems to raise wheat. In that situation you are pretty well stuck with the county yield. I see no logical justification for lowering a T yield when county yields were well above that T yield this past year. Given the fact that we know we have people farming for insurance, I think you are going to see more and more top end producers ( might not be the right term, but people who are throwing a lot of money at trying to raise the best crop they can) opt out of crop insurance because they are the group of people for whom it holds the least value. | |
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? for Oklahoma corn producers (actually all producers)
