Extreme weather is presenting a unique and complicated problem to the nation’s farmers. With many decrying climate change as a scientific impossibility, famers have been left handling the issue of uncommonly severe weather without a place to put the blame. In fact, most farmers do not even mention climate change when discussing the issue, focusing their concerns more on the protection of their crops and mitigating any losses they experience. This has led to a rampant increase in demand for crop insurance throughout the nation.
Crop insurance can help farmers and agricultural businesses recover from natural disasters. Because of the often fickle nature of crops and the fact that most farmers rely entirely on the income these crops produce to survive, even a modest case of flooding can ruin the livelihood of those in the agriculture business. While crop insurance is meant to mitigate losses, such policies often fall short of this aim, leading many agriculture groups to seek more robust crop insurance standard to be imposed by the federal government.
The National Corn Growers Association, based in Kansas, is leading the charge for a more expansive insurance safety net. The group is petitioning Congress to draft new laws that would help protect the nation’s farmers from economic and climatic disasters. Such a law may be hard won, however, as many insurance companies tend to shy away from offering expansive protections to an industry so at the mercy of natural disasters.