We're finally getting to that point in the growing season when farmers can inspect the ears of their corn fields and pods of their soybean fields to get a clear indication of how badly the 2023 drought may have affected the plants' yields. The markets may not know it yet, in the sense that new-crop prices keep sliding lower, but individual farmers looking at individual fields know it -- in all the places across the Corn Belt where severe drought has stretched its fingers, grabbed hold and sucked the verdant green joy out of summer.
For producers who purchased crop insurance earlier this year, their financial losses from lost yield or lost revenue may be mitigated eventually -- once the final bushels are known and compensation payments are made. This will help keep the farmers of those drought-hit regions in business for another year and help keep their retailers and service providers paid, and help keep the local economy ticking. But producers who didn't purchase crop insurance this year will have a longer wait for potential disaster payments from Farm Service Agency programs ... and less to wait for.
I vividly recall the shock I felt in 2012 when an Illinois farmer, suffering from drought-hit fields and poor crops, told me he hadn't bought crop insurance. "What do you mean you didn't buy crop insurance?" I remember thinking. "You must buy crop insurance!" To me, someone who farms in South Dakota, where it seems there is always some drought, freeze, wet spring or other disaster waiting to befall our fields, buying crop insurance seems as automatic as buying fertilizer. One does not simply farm here without crop insurance.
Source: iowacorn.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-banksphotos
Categories: Iowa, Weather