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 Helpful for Ohio Farmers
The National Climatic Data Center reported that as the 2012 drought deepened and expanded this summer, it became one of the six largest droughts in modern record keeping. Here in Ohio, you really didn’t need a weather expert to tell you just how bad it was. And before the rains finally came – which were too late for many of crop – the fields were so […]
Hurricane Isaac Brings Mixed Blessings to Central U.S.
The arrival of heavy rains from Hurricane Isaac made some farmers happy and others worried to death, depending on where they were located and what they were growing. In Louisiana and Mississippi, most of the cotton crop was two to four weeks from harvest when Isaac made landfall. That was the same situation as 2008 […]
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 […]
Crop Insurance Helps An Iowa Farmer Plant Another Day After 2011 Floods
There are few places in the country that personify the radical whims of Mother Nature as well as the state of Iowa. Last year, Iowa and much of the upper Midwest suffered under record flooding when major rivers left their banks. This year, Iowa farmers are facing one of the worst droughts in decades. The […]
A Drought Isn’t A Disaster if the Right Tools Are in Place
A drought specialist with the national weather service recently compared the drought and heat wave here in the Midwest with the catastrophic dry period of 1988 that at the time cost agriculture $78 billion. This year’s weather pattern, which settled into the Great Plains and the Southwest last year and has spread into the Corn […]
Thankfully, There Are Ways to Deal With Droughts Like This
As a cotton farmer in West Texas, last year I felt that I had about as much of a chance of seeing a good soaking rain as I did of running into the Tooth Fairy when I stopped by my local dentist. Unfortunately for the area farmers, much of the cotton in this part of […]
When Mother Nature Gives You A Jolt, Crop Insurance is There
By Quentin Bowen Sitting on a combine for 12 hours a day harvesting corn and soybeans gives a person a certain degree of clarity combined with long blocks of time to think and analyze. Looking at the corn I’m harvesting, I marvel at the fact that somehow, my family farm managed to dodge the many […]
The Lone Star State Is Unfortunately Exceptional
By Dee Vaughan Texas is an exceptional state, and most Texans will be happy to explain why that’s so. Unfortunately, for this year, that term also applies to the bone-dry conditions that we’ve seen unfold over the last 12 months. Texas, it seems, is locked in what weather experts call “an exceptional drought,” something many […]
