Farmers: Strengthen crop insurance in next farm bill

During the recent U.S. House Committee on Agriculture field hearing in Lubbock, several West Texas farmers who gave testimony expressed a need to strengthen federal crop insurance when the next farm bill is written. The ag committee had its seventh in a series of hearings on the Texas Tech University campus to review U.S. agriculture policy as the committee begins the process of writing the 2012 Farm Bill. Ronnie Holt, a cotton, corn and grain sorghum farmer from Muleshoe, serves as chairman of the Crop Insurance Professionals Association. In his testimony, Holt’s plea was to strengthen crop insurance, “a particularly timely request in the wake of the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s efforts to slash crop insurance investments by billions — a proposal that has been widely criticized by Congress and the agricultural community.”