Crop Insurance: Handout or Safety Net for Young Farm Families?

This post was initially published on American Soybean Association's Pod Policy blog on November 15, 2017. 

My husband started farming the same year we got engaged – and we put about the same amount of thought into each.  This is to say, we didn’t think about either much at all.

We were 21 and 22 years old, driven by emotions more than reason, so we got married and started farming.  Looking back now, I think both of those decisions require just that – throwing logic out the window and following your heart.   If you stopped to analyze the work involved, you could never logically justify either.

Both also required a third party approval from the person who was funding the adventure.  My dad was an easy sell; he picked up the tab for the dress and party without much hesitation.  Our lender, on the other hand, was not so easily convinced.

Although the risk of losing everything, which at that point was really nothing, wasn’t enough to give us cold feet, it was enough to justify a denial from our lender. Crop insurance was the offsetting strength to our negative equity balance sheet.  It was the safeguard our lender needed to take a gamble on us.

Protecting crop insurance is vital to protecting the ability of young and beginning (YB) farmers to enter the market.  In an industry where the average farmer is 58 years old and record transitions are expected to take place in the upcoming years, we are in dire need of new people starting to farm.

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