Farm Bill Leans Toward Crop Insurance Welfare

All Things Considered:

For decades, farmers have been getting checks from the federal government as part of a safety net to help protect against, for instance, the financial ruin of drought or floods.
So last year when a big drought hit the Midwest, who paid for it? You did.
As my colleague Dan Charles has , payouts from crop insurance policies added up to about $16 billion, and much of it was paid by taxpayers.
And as Congress debates a new farm bill that will authorize future spending on crop insurance subsidies, it seems that the programs are poised to become more generous.
Lawmakers are considering an additional program that would help farmers recoup even more of their losses than currently is covered by crop insurance.
You see, the way crop insurance works, farmers are eligible for payouts not only when their crops fail due to drought or flood, but also when the prices of their crops drop.
In essence, farmers with crop insurance are able to lock in a guaranteed price. Sometimes, like last summer, they're able to get the best of all worlds: High prices for their crops, together with a hefty insurance payout to compensate them for a small harvest.
Since we, the taxpayers, pay about 60 percent of crop insurance premiums, farmers can get these generous insurance policies on the cheap.
Farm state Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, is among those who think the program works. He summed up his support recently on the Senate floor when he said, "Crop insurance allows producers a way to manage risk, so they can provide a stable and secure food supply and pass their operations onto their children."
But not everyone is so convinced that this is a success story.
Critics say crop insurance has reduced the risk of farming so much that farmers are now incentivized to farm on marginal lands, such as wetlands or lands with less than optimal soil.
"When the government is guaranteeing you [a farmer] 85 percent of your income, it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense to farm in places that might flood or have low soil moisture, which might not have been practical to farm if you simply had your own skin in the game," says Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group.
He also says the system helps the rich get richer. About a third of the subsidies go to the largest 4 percent of farm operators.
In its farm subsidy , EWG finds the largest recipients of crop insurance support receive more than $1 million a year in subsidies.

As if the direct payments of $18,000 a year, and last year's crop insurance payment of $70,000 weren't enough, dad and I got a check for $28,000 from the SURE program (quasi-disaster payment) a week or two ago.  That was for the 2011 crop (which wasn't all that bad).  Honestly, I think that payment was made because last year was an election year, but they just weren't efficient enough to get it to us before the election.  It makes me laugh to hear the same farmers who bitch about minorites on welfare justify why the crop insurance program should be even more generous.  Nothing like a sense of entitlement.