Jaime Cortes is a recipient of the 2024 Crop Insurance Industry Outstanding Outreach Award, which was presented during the 2024 Crop Insurance Industry Annual Convention in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Outstanding Outreach award recognizes an individual who provides outstanding service to all farmers, including outreach to small, limited resource, and socially disadvantaged farmers.

Jaime Cortes, Marsh McLennan, exhibits exemplary service and outreach to Native American agriculture producers. Jamie has represented his agency and the industry well, providing Native American agriculture producer education on Rainfall Index/Pasture Rangeland and Forage, livestock programs and Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.

While relatively new to crop insurance, Jaime focuses his time educating producers on the benefits provided by the Rainfall Index and livestock programs. Jaime recognized that many tribe members throughout the Pacific Northwest were raising cattle and had enormous risks that could be managed utilizing PRF and livestock programs. He took it upon himself to attend a Northwest Intertribal Council (IAC) meeting to better understand the risks Native agriculture producers face.

Following this meeting, Jamie was able to meet with several members of the Northwest IAC to provide them with information about the risk management solutions available to producers and ranchers. Following the meeting, one attendee remarked that he was the first person in 20 years to discuss crop insurance with this group. That meeting sparked many additional meetings with several other tribe councils and ag groups throughout the Pacific Northwest to discuss the benefits of utilizing crop insurance to manage risk. Jaime’s focus is to educate producers and ranchers on the ability to utilize tools to cover production cost with the various MPCI programs available.

Jaime efforts are recognized by others within industry. After leading a presentation on Livestock Disaster Resources at the 2022 IAC Annual Conference, he has been asked to return to the 2023 IAC Annual Conference as a panelist discussing crop insurance. Jamie has also submitted a proposal to lead another presentation on LRP, PRF, Weaned Calf and WFRP/Micro Farm at the conference, continuing his goal to educate Native agriculture producers on the tools available to them.

Jaime has demonstrated his commitment to outreach and education to these underserved producers and ranchers. His goal is to provide information to producers/ranchers, so they can utilize all the risk management tools available to protect their farms and ranches.

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PHOTO: Jaime Cortes was presented with a 2024 Crop Insurance Outstanding Outreach award by Scott Arnold (right) Chair of the National Crop Insurance Services Board of Directors, and Tom Zacharias (left), President of National Crop Insurance Services.