The holiday season is a time for reflection, gratitude, and planning for the future – themes that inspired the latest episode of Keep America Growing, a monthly podcast all about crop insurance.
Tom Zacharias, the podcast’s host and President of National Crop Insurance Services (NCIS), begins by giving thanks for the holiday dinners made possible by America’s farmers and ranchers.
Tables filled with holiday abundance including turkey, ham, vegetables, and generous portions of desserts “is one of this country’s greatest achievements,” Zacharias noted. “We enjoy the most abundant, affordable, and readily available food supply in history.”
He explained that crop insurance plays a critical role in that success story, saying, “Year after year, America’s food supply endures because farmers can recover and rebuild after disasters.”
And there are plenty of data points showing that farmers and ranchers are turning to crop insurance more and more to help mitigate their growing risks.
- Since 2018, more than 205 million agricultural acres have been added to the crop insurance system. That’s a 61% increase, covering an area twice the size of California.
- Today, crop insurance provides $70 billion more in protection than it did five years ago – a 65% increase in disaster coverage.
- Approximately 200,000 additional policies were sold during that time, meaning farmers are less reliant on taxpayer-funded disaster aid than they were when the current Farm Bill took hold.
- In just five years, crop insurers have distributed more than $65 billion to rural America to help farmers recover from disasters.
“It will be crucial going forward to build on these successes in the next Farm Bill and other pieces of agricultural legislation we might see in the 119th Congress,” Zacharias concluded. “The affordability, availability, and economic viability of crop insurance are pillars of our system and must be protected.”
Check out the entire podcast and previous episodes here.