CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Trent Patterson, Lake County, Tennessee
For Trent Patterson, 2012 was a very dry year. Drought parched much of Tennessee, where he farms about 4,500 acres planted to cotton, corn, soybeans and wheat. The drought forced farmers like Patterson to switch crops from the flagship cotton to soybeans, which requires less agricultural inputs. With crop insurance as part of most farmers’ […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Paul Penner, Hillsboro, Kansas
In 2012, the drought in Kansas was in its second year, and wheat, corn and soybean farmer Paul Penner was just trying to survive to the next season. Crop insurance has been Penner’s lifeline for the last two years and the years before that. It has given him and his wife, Deborah, the means and […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Tom & Mike Audet, Orwell, Vermont
Ledge Haven Farm might be one of those Vermont farms that would be most likely to end up on a postcard. The place is just about everything you would think of when you put the words Vermont and agriculture together. The 550-acre farm, owned by brothers Tom and Mike Audet, is a family-run dairy and […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Jimmy Miller, Interlachen, Florida
For centuries, blueberries were gathered from the dense forests and bogs by Northeastern U.S. Native Americans, and are one of the only fruits we consume that are native to North America. So when most of us hear about blueberry farms, we conjure up images of cool, damp climates and cold winters. Except on Jimmy Miller’s […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Andy Bell, Climax, Georgia
On the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, you can chase a greased pig in the southwestern Georgia town of Climax as it celebrates its Swine Time Festival, which normally draws up to 30,000 people in an area where only 300 people live. There is also corn shucking and a squeal-off. Climax is the highest point on […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Bob and Mike Buntin, Thompsonville, Illinois
The choices Illinois farmers faced in the past when drought struck the Midwest were unpleasant all around. They could borrow money from family, drain their hard-earned savings or go under. In the last decade, crop insurance has made it possible for brothers Robert (Bob) and Michael Buntin, owners of Buntin Bros., Inc. in Thompsonville, to […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Jerry McReynolds, Woodston, Kansas
On land where wheat stalks heavy with grain would normally wave on a breeze in the late summer, the searing drought of 2012 zapped nearly every inch of land across the Kansas plains, leaving it burnt and lifeless. There was no way to hide from the drought in the Grain Belt. Just one year after […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Todd & Ty Williams
Todd and Ty Williams grew up on their family’s farm near Gruver, Texas, a town of about 1,100 people in the panhandle region. Todd Williams says he’s been driving a tractor since he was about seven years old, so it was just the natural course of events that he and his brother Ty would end […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Whitney Blodgett, Shoreham, Vermont
Whitney Blodgett has been farming in the family’s Vermont apple orchard, commercially known as “Sentinel Pine Orchard,” his whole life. Blodgett says that the family purchased the orchard in 1964, and have since grown, adding the abandoned dairy farm next door. Sentinel Pine Orchard, is comprised of 220 acres of apple trees, mostly planted in […]
CROP INSURANCE IN ACTION: Mike Garavaglia, Vero Beach, Florida
Florida accounts for roughly 70 percent of the U.S. annual production of citrus, of which the vast majority goes into processing, mostly for orange juice. Citrus is big business in the Sunshine State, and Mike Garavaglia is one of Florida’s many citrus growers who make their living putting fresh citrus on the tables of America’s […]
