{"id":109692,"date":"2019-11-05T11:29:52","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T16:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=109692"},"modified":"2019-11-05T11:29:52","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T16:29:52","slug":"guest-column-crop-insurance-a-farm-business-must","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=109692","title":{"rendered":"GUEST COLUMN: Crop insurance a farm business must"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Mary Lou, Steve, Dan and Ben Durfee accept the 2018 Madison County Conservation Farm of the Year on behalf of their family, employees and community. (File photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Steve Durfee<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My family knows a little about how much farmers are at the\nmercy of Mother Nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Dust Bowl, my grandparents Edson and Harriet\nDurfee fled the disaster in Nebraska and came back east to Chittenango to start\nagain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then, there was no farm safety net. When the Nebraska\nprairie turned against them, farmers like my grandparents lost it all and had\nto rebuild on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, our family\u2019s Tuscarora Dairy Farm is going strong. I\nfarm with my wife and three sons. We grow corn and wheat and have about 1,000\nmilk cows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our farm is not on the outskirts of town. It\u2019s right in the\nheart of Chittenango with about a thousand homes nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a great opportunity to continue to connect consumers\nwith agriculture. Most people today don\u2019t have a good understanding of where their\nfood comes from. We run a small vegetable stand to serve the community. It\ndoesn\u2019t make much money, but we do it because it makes our neighbors happy and\nkeeps them connected to farming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I think back to the challenges my grandparents faced as\nthey packed up and left Nebraska, it reminds me just how much farming has\nchanged. I think they\u2019d be surprised and pleased at how successful our family\nfarm has become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wouldn\u2019t have been as successful without a strong farm\nsafety net. The centerpiece of that safety net is the public-private\npartnership of crop insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently invited representatives from the crop insurance\nindustry to my farm to tell my story and show them how we use crop insurance to\nmanage the weather and price risks that, for my grandparents, were nearly\nunmanageable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large investment required for each acre we plant makes\ncrop insurance a must. Buying insurance helps take out some of the risk on\nthose acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to milk, last year the price was so low that\nwe feared if it continued it would put a lot of stress on our finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We bought a dairy revenue protection policy from our local crop\ngrowers agent to help mitigate the risk of the volatile dairy market.\nFortunately, the price of milk rebounded, and we didn\u2019t need to use the\ninsurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all farmers, we would rather sell products at a good\nprice than make an insurance claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crop insurance is just like all the other insurance you\nhave. We end up spending a lot of money on insurance, but you can sleep at\nnight knowing if something happens, you are going to be protected partially and\nyou will be able to rebound from it and continue on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to thank Congress and the American public for\nbacking a strong system of crop insurance in the Farm Bill. As the political\ncycle heats up and we head toward the 2020 elections, I hope policymakers will\nremember just how important crop insurance has become to rural America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Durfee operates\nTuscarora Dairy Farm with his wife and three sons in Chittenango.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steve Durfee My family knows a little about how much farmers are at the mercy of Mother Nature. During the Dust Bowl, my grandparents Edson and Harriet Durfee fled the disaster in Nebraska and came back east to Chittenango to start again. Back then, there was no farm safety net. When the Nebraska prairie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23679,23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agfarming","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/89851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}