By Tim Totheroh

I’ve been a farmer all my life. I’m also a crop insurance adjuster, which means last summer was a busy time for me.

By the end of harvest claims last year, I visited more than 200 farms, meeting with the farmers, inspecting their losses and adjusting their crop insurance claims. It was sad at times because farmers take crop losses personally.

I’ve never seen anything like what I witnessed last summer in Illinois. In one field, I walked a half-mile through the field and walked the half-mile back in another part of the field, and I never saw a single ear of corn. Not one ear.

Some varieties of corn did better than others, and Mother Nature was kinder to some farmers than to others. When all was said and done, we ended up with about half of a normal corn crop at harvest. Even with half of a harvest, farmers still had a full tab of bills to pay.

I’ll never forget the faces of young farmers shaken by the sight of their year’s income slowly withering in the…