Articles Tagged with ''crop insurance''

The incoming Biden administration is expected to take a new look at using crop insurance to encourage farming measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect water quality, but the effort will face an old challenge — finding the data to prove that the practices don’t increase program losses.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has been involved in just about every consequential piece of agricultural legislation in the last four decades. But the bill he thinks may have the most lasting impact is the 1996 farm bill known as Freedom to Farm (or “Freedom to Fail” by its detractors). The bill formally ended the system of production controls and commodity subsidies first imposed during the Depression.

President-elect Joe Biden’s commitment to addressing climate change and the food and ag industry’s progress in coalescing on ag carbon proposals are increasing the chances that farmers could see new income streams developing through private markets and USDA programs.

Leading farm groups united with two major environmental groups to release on Tuesday more than 40 policy proposals aimed at helping farmers benefit economically from reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions while helping growers become more resilient amid climate change.

As President-elect Joe Biden assembles his transition teams and looks toward building a better future, he has the opportunity to boost agricultural resilience in ways that improve the health of rural communities and ecosystems.

Producers hit with wet planting conditions, a drought, and high winds are preparing for a long and slow corn and soybean harvest the next couple of weeks. Weather pattern changes for the upper Midwest could only make matters worse if the crop isn't harvested in time.

Agricultural lenders should design their loan programs to encourage farmers' adoption of farming practices resilient to the impacts of climate change, the Environmental Defense Fund says in a new report.

More than half of farmers who seeded their cash crop into a growing cover crop last year — a practice known as “planting green” — said it helped them plant earlier than they could in fields that didn't have cover crops, according to an annual survey.

Industry analysts, government officials, and insurance adjusters are trying to make sense of just how much damage was done by the heavy winds that cut through the heart of the Corn Belt in a Monday storm system.